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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