Daily Current Affairs 2nd July 2020 | CivilsonlinEd

02nd July 2020 Daily Current Affairs

           

v  Unique Urban Forest inaugurated at the Office of the CAG

  Ø  Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India taken steps to establish an Urban Forest in the Office Park.

  Ø  Keeping in view the limited area, local material was adopted to enable intensive afforestation.  The forest is made up of trees which are native to the area and are three dimensional, multi-layered communities having 30 times the surface area of the greenery of single-layered lawns, and have more than 30 times the ability to protect against natural disasters and to conserve the environment.

  Ø  Inaugurating the Urban forest, Union Environment Minister, Shri Prakash Javadekar expressed happiness and said that this would be a dense urban forest  with multiple tree layers including 12000 saplings of 59 indigenous species in another year or so.

  Ø  Shri Javadekar said that they are the lungs of the cities and act as an oxygen bank and Carbon Sink. The Environment Minister appreciated that the Miyawaki method of forest creation is employed which could help in reducing the temperature by as much as 14 degrees & increase the moisture by more than 40%.

  Ø  With minimal maintenance, including watering and de-weeding, the urban forest will be self-sustainable by October 2021.  The Urban forest has an ecosystem which has the capacity to restore habitat for birds, bees, butterflies and microfauna. These are essential for pollination of crops and fruits and to help maintain a balanced ecosystem.

  Ø  A dense forest ecosystem has been created in an area that is little over 1 acre in size. The multi-layered forest has shrubs, small to medium-size trees and tall trees carefully arranged as peripheral and core plant communities.

Source: PIB

v  OPERATION SAMUDRA SETU

  Ø  INS Jalashwa, deployed by the Indian Navy for “Operation Samudra Setu", entered Tuticorin harbour with 687 Indian nationals embarked from Bandar Abbas, Iran. Thus far Indian Navy ships have brought back 920 Indian citizens from Iran.

  Ø  With this evacuation, the Indian Navy has now repatriated 3992 Indian nationals from Maldives, Sri Lanka and Iran during the ongoing pandemic.

                                          Source : PIB

v  5 years of Digital India

  Ø  Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister for Electronics & IT, Communications and Law & Justice, has said that the digital journey has focused on empowerment, inclusion and digital transformation  

  Ø  He stated that in the current pandemic scenario, thanks to JAM trinity (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile), people are able to work from home, people are able to make digital payments, students are able to learn through TV, Mobile and Laptop, patients are able to take teleconsultation, and farmers in the remote corner of India is able to get PM-KISAN benefits directly in their bank accounts.

  Ø  Digital India has positively impacted all aspects of the lives of Indian citizens identity management through Aadhaar, Direct Benefit Transfer, Common Services Centres, DigiLocker, mobile-based UMANG services, participatory governance through MyGov, Jeevan Pramaan, to UPI, Ayushman Bharat, e-Hospital, PM-Kisan, e-NAM, Soil Health Cards, SWAYAM, SWAYAM PRABHA, National Scholarship Portal, e-Pathshala, and so on.

  Ø  A ‘National AI Portal’ and ‘Responsible AI for Youth’ was launched recently to lay the foundation for an AI-powered future

  Ø  Digital India’s initiatives have also played a pivotal role during the CoVID-19 situation, such as Aarogya Setu, E-Sanjeevani, SAMHAR-COVID-19, sensitisation through MyGov and Social media platforms etc.

  Ø  Pointing  out that the number of e-Services has increased from 2,463 in 2014 to 3,858 till May 2020 and daily average electronic transactions have increased from 66 lakh in 2014 to 16.3 crore in 2020

 Ø Aadhaar has been issued to 125.7 crore residents and 4,216 crore authentications have been facilitated

  Ø  “Direct Benefit Transfer to the tune of Rs 11.1 lakh crore has been disbursed for 426 schemes from 56 Ministries and has led to the saving of Rs 1.7 lakh crore due. 

  Ø Jan Dhan Accounts have reached 38.73 crore beneficiaries, with a total of Rs 1.33 lakh crore in beneficiaries bank accounts. 

  Ø  Mobile and internet connections are being used by 117 crores and 68.8 crore users, respectively

  Ø  DigiLocker, launched on July 1, 2015, has 378 crore issued documents

  Ø  Unified Mobile App for New-Age Governance (UMANG) has 860+ services operational

  Ø  MyGov has been launched to facilitate participatory governance in the country, with a total of 1.17 Crore registered participants

  Ø  Emphasizing Digital India’s initiatives during the COVID-19 situation, such as Aarogya Setu for its ground-breaking development time of 3 weeks and localisation in 12 Indian languages

                                            Source : PIB