Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - October, 2018

Notes:
The 31st All India Railways Chess tournament 2018 has started at Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu on October 3. The 4-day tournament has formally inaugurated by General Manager of Southern Railway, SM Kulshreshta. The event is being conducted in Swiss League Format at both team and individual levels. Around 87 players including five grandmasters and 18 international masters from 14 Zonal Railways and seven Production Units from across Indian Railways are participating in the event. The successful players from this tournament will represent Indian Railways in the National Chess Championship to be held in November 2018.

Notes:
The first-ever Regional Conference on ‘Women in Detention and Access to Justice’ has recently held in Shimla on October 4-5, 2018. The Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) organized the conference in collaboration with the Prison Department, Himachal Pradesh. This conference is organised with a view to provide a platform for the prison personnel of all ranks at the national level to share their candid views on various operational as well as administrative issues not only with their counterparts, but also with other experts of national repute in this field and also to identify best practices and standards in the working of Correctional Administration to meet new challenges in the present day’s context to bring out prison reforms in objective terms.

Notes:
The cave shrine of Mata Vaishnodevi in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has been declared the “cleanest religious place” in the country. Over 81.78 pilgrims visited the shrine in Trikuta hills in the district in 2017. Mata Vaishno Devi shrine has won the prestigious ‘cleanest religious place’ award at Safaigiri Summit and Awards 2018 ceremony organised by the India Today Group in Mumbai on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti. The award has been given in recognition of the significant strides made by the shrine board for ensuring sanitation and cleanliness all along the tracks and in the entire shrine area. The Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board (SMVSB) has introduced water less urinals based on ‘flush-me-not’ technology to curtail water consumption significantly and reverse vending machines to promote scientific disposal and recycling of PET bottles. This is the 2nd successive year when the board has been awarded in the field of sanitation as in 2017 it had received the ‘Special Swachh Iconic Place’ award under the ‘Swachhta Hi Seva’ campaign of the Government of India (GoI).

Notes:
Pankaj Sharma has been appointed India’s Ambassador & permanent representative to United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Sharma is currently the joint secretary (Disarmament and International Security Division) in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). He will replace Amandeep Gill.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has kept all key policy rates unchanged in its fourth bi-monthly monetary policy review, which is recently announced on October 5, 2018. A six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), headed by Governor Urjit Patel, decided to keep the repo rate unchanged at 6.5% and the reverse repo rate at 6.25%. Repo rate is the rate at which RBI lends to banks, while the reverse repo is the rate at which RBI borrows money from banks. Accordingly, the Marginal Standing Facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate too were kept at 6.75%. On the growth front, RBI retained GDP growth projection for 2018-19 at 7.4%.

Notes:
Keerthana Pandian from India has won the girls’ title in the IBSF World Under-16 Snooker Championships by defeating Belarussian rival Albina Leschuk 3-1 in the final. It’s her first international crown. In the corresponding boys category, Ben Martens of Belgium clinched the title in St Petersburg, Russia, according to information received from the media cell of International Billiards & Snooker Federation (IBSF).

Notes:
The Government of India (GoI) has reconstituted Supreme Court-empowered Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA), which is tasked with taking various measures to tackle air pollution in the National Capital Region (NCR). The tenure of the last EPCA expired on 3rd October 2018. Former secretary Bhure Lal will continue to be the chairman of reconstituted Pollution watchdog EPCA. The purpose of the EPCA is to protect & improve the quality of the environment, and prevent & control the environmental pollution in the NCR. The EPCA is also mandated to enforce Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) in the city as per the pollution levels.

Notes:
The World Post Day (WPD) is observed every year on 9 October to mark the anniversary of the establishment of the Universal Postal Union in 1874 in the Swiss Capital, Bern. It was declared World Post Day at the 1969 UPU Congress in Tokyo, Japan. The proposal was submitted by Anand Mohan Narula, a member of the Indian delegation. Since then, the day has been celebrated all over the world to highlight the importance of the postal services. The 2018 theme is: “Imagine you are a letter travelling through time. What message do you wish to convey to your readers?”. This year’s observance of World Post Day highlights the sector’s value not just for delivering the mail, but for delivering good.

Notes:
On October 7, Badminton coach Pullela Gopichand has been honoured with the Ramineni Foundation’s Outstanding Person award. The award was presented by Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu. He also presented special awards to Telugu literary wizard Garikapati Narasimha Rao, film director Nag Ashwin Reddy and writer C Venkata Ramana. The Ramineni Foundation, based in the US, was established in 1995 and ever since has been honouring eminent persons for their achievements in various fields. The outstanding person award carries Rs 2 lakh and special awards Rs 1 lakh each.

Notes:
The section 151A of the Representation of the People Act of 1951 mandates the Election Commission of India (ECI) to fill the casual vacancies in the Houses of Parliament and State Legislatures through bye elections within six months from the date of occurence of the vacancy. But, this is only if the remainder of the term of a member who is newly elected is one year or more. The term of 16th Lok Sabha is upto 3rd June, 2019. Therefore, it is understood that some newspapers have reported that the ECI on the one hand announced the bye elections to fill the 3 casual vacancies in Lok Sabha from Karnataka while the bye elections to fill 5 vacancies in LS from Andhra Pradesh have not been announced. As the vacancies from Karnataka have occurred more than one year before the expiration of the term of House, bye elections are required to be held under Section 151A of R. P. Act 1951 to fill these vacancies within 6 months from the date of occurrence of vacancies that is 18th& 21st May, 2018. In the case of vacancies from Andhra Pradesh, there is no need to hold bye elections as the remaining term of the Lok Sabha is less than one year from the date of occurrence of vacancies that is 20th June, 2018.