10 PM Current Affairs Quiz : April 21, 2018

E-Vidhan is a part of Digital India Programme. It aims to make the working of State Legislatures paperless by digitizing it. It will make the working of state legislatures transparent and bring about good governance. The Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs is the nodal ministry in charge of implementing the scheme.

The Article 124(4) of the Constitution says: “A Judge of the Supreme Court shall not be removed from his office except by an order of the President passed after an address by each House of Parliament supported by a majority of the total membership of that House and by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting has been presented to the President in the same session for such removal on the grounds of proved misbehaviour incapacity.”

The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act) 2012 was formulated in order to effectively address sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children.The Act defines a child as any person below eighteen years of age. It defines different forms of sexual abuse, sexual harassment and pornography. It deems a sexual assault to be “aggravated” under certain circumstances, such as when the abused child is mentally ill or when the abuse is committed by a person in a position of trust or authority like a family member, police officer, teacher, or doctor. The police is given the role of child protector during the investigative process. Thus, the police personnel receiving a report of sexual abuse of a child are given the responsibility of making urgent arrangements for the care and protection of the child, such as obtaining emergency medical treatment for the child and placing the child in a shelter home, and bringing the matter in front of the Child Welfare Committee, should the need arise.

The Act further makes provisions for avoiding the re-victimisation of the child at the hands of the judicial system. It provides for special courts that conduct the trial in-camera and without revealing the identity of the child, in a manner that is as child-friendly as possible. Hence, the child may have a parent or other trusted person present at the time of testifying and can call for assistance from an interpreter, special educator, or other professional while giving evidence. Above all, the Act stipulates that a case of child sexual abuse must be disposed of within one year from the date the offence is reported.

Major recommendations of the Sachar Committee include:

1) Setting up an Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC) to look into grievances of deprived groups like minorities.

2) Working out nomination procedure to increase participation of minorities in public bodies.

3) Providing legal mechanism to address complaints of discrimination against minorities in matters of employment,housing, schooling and obtaining bank loans.

4) Establishing a delimitation procedure that does not reserve constituencies with high minority population for SCs.

5) Initiating and institutionalising a process of evaluating contents of textbooks to purge them of explicit and implicit material that may impart inappropriate social values, especially religious intolerance.

6) Creating a national data bank where all relevant data for various socio-religious categories are maintained.

7) Setting up an autonomous assessment and monitoring authority to evaluate the extent of development benefits which accrue to different socio-religious categories through various programmes.

8) Setting up a national Wakf Development Corporation with a revolving corpus fund of Rs 500 crore.

9) Creating new cadre to deal with specific Wakf affairs.

The World Bank released a new book The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018 which tracks the wealth of 141 countries between 1995 and 2014. The goal is to help governments plan for a more sustainable economic growth path.

Proton, neutron, and electron are tiny particles that make up atoms. The neutrino is also a tiny elementary particle, but it is not part of the atom. Thus, statement 1 is correct,

Such particles are also found to exist in nature. Neutrino has a very tiny mass, no charge and spin half. It interacts very weakly with other matter particles. So weakly that every second trillions of neutrinos fall on us and pass through our bodies unnoticed.Neutrinos come from the sun (solar neutrinos) and other stars, cosmic rays that come from beyond the solar system, and from the Big Bang from which our Universe originated. They can also be produced in the lab. Thus, statement 2 is correct.