5 August Current Affairs English

Deen Dayal Upadhyaya railway station inaugurated

• Mughalsarai Junction will be formally renamed after Deen Dayal Uphadyay Railway Station from Aug 5.
• A passenger train and a goods train with an all-woman crew was also flagged off.
• A smart yard on the busy Delhi-Howrah route was inaugurated which will have all the advanced facilities.
• Mughalsarai is also the birthplace of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.

About Deendayal Upadhyay 

• Deendayal Upadhyay was born in Mathura in 1916
• He qualified the civil services examination but didn’t join.
• He rather became, in 1942, a life-time volunteer of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which he had joined five years ago.
• He was assassinated in 1968 in Mughalsarai.

Institute of Medical Sciences-BHU upgraded to AIIMS level

• Institute of Medical Sciences (IMS), Banaras Hindu University (BHU) was upgraded to the level of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on 04 July 2018.
• With this upgradation, IMS-BHU will be entitled to get enhanced funding and better health care facilities.
• India has now total fourteen new AIIMS across different states opened in the last four years and BHU is the only varsity to get AIIMS like institution status.

Defence India startup challenge launched in Bengaluru

• Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on 04 Aug called upon startups to develop technologies and weapons for the Indian armed forces. It was launched in Bengaluru.
• Through the contest, startups, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individual researchers and academic institutions can take part in 11 different categories of creating technologies and products that can be used by the armed forces.
• Those that come up with prototypes of usable products would be supported with ₹1.5 crore each and friendly procurement procedures from the Ministry under SPARK or Support for Prototype & Research Kickstart in Defence.
• They would be supported by a ₹100-crore Defence Innovation Fund kick-started by defence PSUs Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. and Bharat Electronics Ltd.

11 Categories include:

• Remote air vehicles
• Laser weapons
• Secure and safe communication systems and bandwidth
• Precision targeting systems
• Sensors
• Protected and informed movement of soldiers in battle tanks

Seven High Courts to get new Chief Justices

• The central government has notified the appointment of Justices Vineet Saran, Indira Banerjee and KM Joseph to the Supreme Court.
• List of new High Court Judges:

1. Odisha - Justice KS Jhaveri
2. Madras – Justice VK Kamlesh Tahilramani
3. Patna - Justice MK Shah
4. Delhi - Justice Rajendra Menon
5. Kerala - Justice Hrishikesh Roy 
6. Jammu & Kashmir – Justice Gita Roy
7. Jharkhand – Justice Anirudha Bose

How High Court Judges are appointed?

• India has 24 high courts at various states. Any person who has practiced at least 10 years as a lawyer is eligible to get appointed as Judge of High Court. 
• The Parliament of India passed a new bill – The National Judicial Appointment Commission Bill, 2014 on 14^th August, 2014 and the bill to establish the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC).
• The NJAC (the committee) recommends a Judge of a High Court to be the Chief Justice of a High Court on the basis of seniority across High Court Judges. 
• It has three conditions:

1. Nominations shall be sought from Chief Justice of the concerned High Court for appointment of HC Judges.
2. JAC consults the Governor and the Chief Minister of the state before making recommendations
3. NJAC finally recommends the names for appointment of HC Judges.

Delhi HC quashes its March 2017 notification revising minimum wages

• The Delhi High Court on Saturday quashed its 2017 notification which revised the minimum wages for all classes of workers in all scheduled employment.
• The court cited that the decision was ultra vires the constitution.
• Ultra vires refer to something which is beyond the powers of the authority taking the decision.
• As per the notification, the minimum wages for unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled labour were fixed at Rs 13,500, Rs 14,698 and Rs 16,182, respectively. 
• A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar quashed the Delhi government notification setting up an advisory panel on minimum wages, saying both decisions were taken in contravention of principles of natural justice and without sufficient material and were invalid. 

India third Asian nation to get STA-1 status from US

• India has become the third Asian country to get the Strategic Trade Authorisation-1 (STA-1) status after Japan and South Korea.
• India is the 37th country to be designated the STA-1 status by the United States. 
• It has significance as the Trump Administration made an exception for India, which is yet to become a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). 
• Traditionally, the US has placed only those countries in the STA-1 list who are members of the four export control regimes: Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), Wassenaar Arrangement (WA), Australia Group (AG) and the NSG. 

HAL’s Light Combat Aircraft project to come under IAF control

• The government is poised to hand over control of the Bangalore division of State-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to the Indian Air Force (IAF).
• This is to prevent more time and cost overruns on the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) project.
• India has named its LCA as Tejas.
• The LCA programme was sanctioned in 1983 and the aircraft made its first flight in 2001.
• The HAL Tejas is an Indian single-seat, single-jet engine, multirole light fighter designed by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy.

India, Thailand Army to start joint exercise 'Maitree 2018"

• India and Thailand will conduct joint army exercise Maitree 2018 in the month of August.
• It is scheduled to take place in Mueang, Chachoengsao Province, Thailand between the forces of Indian Army and Royal Thai Army in August.
• This 14 days exercise aims to to enhance the ability of Royal Thai Army and Indian Army to undertake joint tactical level operations on the handling of insurgency and related issues in the urban/rural scenario.
• Last exercise was held in Himachal Pradesh’s Bakloh in 2017.

India completes 70 years in serving for UN Peacekeeping Mission

• India has completed 70 years in serving for UN Peacekeeping Mission.
• India has been contributing to peacekeeping mission since 1948.
• More than 200,000 Indians have served in 49 of the 71 peacekeeping missions established around the world since 1948. 
• Currently, there are around 6,700 uniformed peacekeepers from India, the vast majority of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in South Sudan. 
• India has also provided 15 Force Commanders to various missions, and was the first country to contribute to the Trust Fund on sexual exploitation and abuse, which was set up in 2016.

• Peacekeeping Mission

1. The United Nations Charter gives the United Nations Security Council the power and responsibility to take collective action to maintain international peace and security.
2. For this reason, the international community usually looks to the Security Council to authorize peacekeeping operations through Chapter VII authorizations.