Current Affairs Update – 28th Feb, 2015

• Budget 2015-16
• India
• Sports
• Appointments
• Days
• Obituaries

• Gross tax receipts of 14.49 lakh crore rupees
• Non-planned expenditure was 1312200 crore rupees
• Corporate tax was reduced to 25 percent over next four years from existing 30 percent
• Defence allocation for fiscal 2015-16 is 246727 crore rupees
• 100 percent tax deduction for contribution to Swachh Bharat Fund
• Service tax hiked by 14 percent
• 34699 crore rupees allocated for MNREGA, which is highest ever allocation to the programme
• Yoga was included in the ambit of charitable purposes under the Income Tax Act
• People will have to quote their PAN for all purchases above 1 lakh rupees
• Law under FEMA on capital account transactions will be amended
• By 2022 there is plan to produce 175000 MW renewable energy
• Visa on arrival extended to 150 countries
• 1000 crore rupees more allocated to Nirbhaya fund
• Transport allowance increased to 1600 rupees per month
• Online excise & service tax registrations in 2 working days
• 1008 crore rupees was collected under total wealth tax
• GARR will be deferred by 2 years
• Benami transactions in property deals will be curbed
• 7-year imprisonment for non-filing of return on foreign asset

• To give financial confidence to the budding entrepreneur, especially those in the socially excluded category, the government has proposed creation of a special bank – MUDRA – to fund small enterprises.
• MUDRA, or the Micro Units Development Refinance Agency Bank, will have a corpus of ` 20,000 crore and credit guarantee corpus of ` 3,000 crore.
• “MUDRA Bank will refinance Micro-Finance Institutions through a Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana,” the finance minister said in his budget speech.
• Finance Minister said that priority in lending will be given to enterprises run by people belonging to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
• The government estimates that there are 3.57 crore small units that are run by people belonging to the socially disadvantaged classes (including other backward class) out of a total of 5.77 crore small business units in the country.

• The government has decided to delink 8 Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS), including National e-Governance Plan, Backward Regions Grant Funds, Modernization of Police Forces and Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Sashaktikaran Abhiyaan (RGPSA), from its support.
• As many as 24 CSS will run with the changed sharing pattern and 31 programmes will get full support of the Centre in 2015-16.
• As per the the General Budget 2015-16, there are 31 schemes to be fully sponsored by the Union Government, 8 schemes have been delinked from support of the Centre and 24 schemes will now be run with the changed sharing pattern.

1. National e-Governance Plan,
2. Backward Regions Grant Funds,
3. Modernization of Police Forces,
4. Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Sashaktikaran Abhiyaan (RGPSA),
5. Scheme for Central Assistance to the States for developing export infrastructure,
6. Scheme for setting up of 6000 Model Schools,
7. National Mission on Food processing  
8. Tourist Infrastructure.

• In a significant move, the Government today said commodities market watchdog FMC will be merged with the capital market regulator SEBI.
• After the emergence of a major crisis at National Spot Exchange Ltd, the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) was last year brought under the Finance Ministry.
• Presenting his maiden full-fledged Budget today, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the government would merge “FMC with SEBI’’.
• The proposed merger would help streamline the monitoring of commodity futures trading and curb wild speculations, he added.
• To implement the merger, the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act (SCRA) as well as the Forward Contracts (Regulation) Act (FCRA) would need amendments.
• The Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC) had recommended that SEBI, IRDA, PFRDA and FMC should be merged into a single entity into a unified financial agency (UFA).

• In order to improve governance of public sector banks, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today proposed setting up an autonomous banks’ board bureau to help lenders raise capital for meeting expansion needs.
• “The bureau will search and select heads of public sector banks and help them in developing differentiated strategies of capital raising plans to innovative financial methods and instruments,” he said while presenting Budget for 2015-16 in the Lok Sabha.
• This would be a step towards establishing a holding and investment company for banks, he said.
• This issue was discussed extensively at the Gyan Sangam addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month.
• During the two-day bankers’ retreat, heads of financial institutions suggested the creation of a Bank Investment Committee (BIC) and transfer of the Government’s investment in banks to BIC.

• During his Budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said an individual tax payer can claim tax benefits for up to ` 4,44,200 in addition to the tax exemption.

• Andhra Pradesh has become the first state to opt for executing the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) on its own and the telecom department will reimburse the cost for the same, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said today.
• “Fibre network of 7.5 lakh kilometres in 2.5 lakh villages is being further speeded up by allowing willing states to undertake its execution on reimbursement of cost determined by the Department of Telecommunications. Andhra Pradesh is the first state to have opted for this manner of implementation,” Jaitley said while presenting the Budget for 2015-16 in Parliament.
• Andhra Pradesh had proposed to deliver broadband connection with 10-15 mbps download speed to each 12 million households for ` 150/month that are planned to be covered under state designed project.
• The state had proposed to execute the project at a cost of ` 4,913 crore in five years while Centre has earmarked ` 1,940 crore for the NOFN project in the state.

• Indian Navy on 27 February 2015 concluded its Theatre Level Readiness and Operational Exercise (TROPEX)-2015. The event encompassed all dimensions of maritime warfare.
• TROPEX-2015 was a month long exercise aimed at validating the Indian Navy’s Concept of Operations and the area of operations spanned across the Arabian Sea and Northern Indian Ocean.
• TROPEX-15 provided a reinforce platform for Indian Navy’s offensive capabilities across all dimensions. It included Network Centric Operations (NCO) by using satellite Rukmani.
• The exercise also reinforced the Navy's ability to serve in different roles with relative ease, when it exercised a Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) mission.

• Union Government blocked private email network like Yahoo and Gmail for official work. The aim of the move is to monitor staff's online activities.
• In this regard, Union Government notified E-mail Policy of Government of India and Policy on use of Information Technology resources of Government of India on 18 February 2015.
• As per the notification, only the e-mail services provided by National Informatics Centre (NIC) shall be used for official communication.
• The notified policies stipulate measures to ensure secure and proper access to and usage of government's IT resources and prevent their misuse by official users.

• Former New Zealand cricket captain Martin David Crowe on 28 February 2015 was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.
• He was inducted into the Hall of Fame during the innings break of the New Zealand-Australia match in the 2015 World Cup at Eden Park, New Zealand.
• He received his commemorative cap from Wally Edwards, ICC Director and Chairman of Cricket Australia.

• Newzealand defeated Australia by 1 wicket in a nail biting match.
• India defeated UAE by 9 wickets in 3rd World Cup Match of India.

• A 49-year-old Indian-origin lawyer has been appointed as a Judicial Commissioner to Singapore's Supreme Court bench for two years.
• Senior Counsel Kannan Ramesh, who was appointed to the bench yesterday, will assume the position from May 22, according to a statement by the Prime Minister's Office.

• Eighth International Rare Disease Day was observed globally on 28 February 2015. The Rare Disease Day annually takes place on the last day of February.
• To mark the day, hundreds of patient organisations from more than 80 countries and regions worldwide carried-on awareness-raising activities around the slogan Day-by-day, hand-in-hand.

• National Science Day is celebrated all over India with great enthusiasm on 28th of February every year in order to commemorate the invention of the Raman Effect in India by the Indian physicist, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman on the same day in the year 1928.
• For his great success in the field of science in India, Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was awarded and honored with the Nobel Prize in the Physics in the year 1930.

• Renowned US actor Leonard Nimoy passed away on 27 February 2015 in Los Angeles following chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 83.
• Leonard Nimoy was best known for his half-human, half-Vulcan character of Mr Spock in the cult scientific-fiction series Star Trek. The character of Mr Spock had a significant cultural impact and garnered Nimoy with three Emmy Award nominations.

• Boris Nemtsov, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Russia and present leading Russian opposition politician was shot dead on 27 February 2015. The unidentified attacker shot him four times in Central Moscow.
• 55-year-old Nemtsov was gunned down a day before he was supposed to lead a demonstration against Putin’s support for the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine and his economic policies. The demonstration was scheduled to be held on 1 March 2015.

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