Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 12 June 2016
:: National ::
Union to form committees for environmental fallout of vehicular pollution
- The Union government has agreed to form committees to suggest measures to mitigate the environmental fallout of vehicular pollution in the country.
- The committees will help the States and the Centre strike a balance between their transport and environmental requirements.
- The National Green Tribunal had banned diesal vehicles over 10 years from Kerala.
- The Tribunal had also banned the State from registering diesel powered vehicles having more than 2-litre engine capacity in Kerala. The Kerala High Court has since stayed the orders.
- As per the motor vehicles rules, the government had collected advance tax for 15 years on all diesel vehicles registered in the State since 2007.
- The implementation of the NGT order to ban those over 10 years would entail repaying the owners an estimated Rs. 300 crore.
- Moreover, the order would cripple the State’s transport sector. More than 4,000 KSRTC buses and lakhs of private vehicles would go off the roads. Movement of people and goods would be negatively impacted.
- Travel would prove to be costlier for the common man. So would transport of goods.
- The Centre required Kerala to shift more to CNG, biofuel and electric hybrid powered motor vehicles in the long run.
Election for 27 seats of Upper house concluded
- For Rajya Sabha polls the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) help the Congress win two seats — one in Madhya Pradesh and another in Uttarakhand.
- In Uttar Pradesh, where elections were held for 11 seats, the BJP won just one seat.
- The victors in U.P. included party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav’s one time alter ego Amar Singh and Beni Prasad Verma, both of whom returned to the party recently, and senior leader Reoti Raman Singh.
- The Congress’s Kapil Sibal also trounced the BJP-backed independent socialite Preeti Mahapatra with the help of the BSP.
- In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP’s M.J. Akbar and Anil Dave sailed through.
- Earlier, 30 of the total 57 seats in the current round of biennial elections to the Upper House were decided without a contest.
- In Karnataka, the Congress won three seats. The fourth seat in the State was won by Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman.
- Rajasthan saw the BJP’s Union Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, party Vice President Om Prakash Mathur, former RBI official Ram Kumar Sharma and Harsh Vardhan Singh emerge victorious.