Bihar Current Affairs (May-June 2020)

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1. Indian Railways’ big ‘Make in India’ success!

The first WAG12B (12000 HP) locomotive, manufactured under ‘Make in India’ initiative recently departed from the Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya railway station in Uttar Pradesh.

The train departed with WAG/12B-60027 at a speed of 100 Kmph from DDU at 2:08 PM in long haul formation for Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction-Barwadih Junction (BRWD) section of DDU and DHN divisions of East Central Railway zone.

The 12,000 HP electric locomotive, a first for Indian Railways, has been manufactured as well as assembled at Alstom’s factory in Madhepura, located in the state of Bihar. The national transporter got the locomotive from Alstom as part of a 3.5 billion euros ‘Make in India’ deal.

2. Hon’ble Minister, Revenue and Land Reforms department, Government of Bihar Shri Ramnarayan Mandal launched the PARIMARJAN application (http://biharbhumi.bihar.gov.in/parimarjan/) on 13th May 2020.
‘Parimarjan’ is a G2C initiative launched by the department for extending online services to its citizen for accepting citizen’s online request for permissible correction in Jamabandi data content as per legal procedure.

3. Alarmed at the recurring AES deaths of children, the Nitish Kumar government has built a 100-bed Paediatrics Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at a hospital in a record time of eight months.
There is no state in the country where there is a 100-bed PICU hospital in one place except now at SKMCH in Muzaffarpur.

4. According to data released in the May 2020 Bulletin of the Sample Registration System against the national infant mortality rate (IMR) of 32, Madhya Pradesh has an IMR of 48 and Nagaland 4. Bihar has the highest birth rate at 26.2 and Andaman and Nicobar Islands has the lowest birth rate of 11.2. Chhattisgarh has the highest death rate at 8 and Delhi, an almost entirely urban state, has a rate of 3.3, indicating better healthcare facilities.

5. On 17th may 2020 a statue of Tara was excavated in Pachna Sheikhpura, a few kilometres from Lali Pahari in Lakhisarai where a structure of a palace has been found atop a hill with exquisite statues Of Vajrayana Buddhism.

6. The Bihar Government has launched an educational app for Class 1 to 12th students. This App named Vidyavahini Bihar is available in Google Playstore. It primarily contains all the books of Class 1 to 12th that students can download to read it digitally on their Smartphone, Laptops or Computer.

7. In May 2020, Bill Gates, the Microsoft Chairman, braved it all to make it to Gularia, one of the most inaccessible villages of the north Bihar’s flood-prone Khagaria district.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has adopted the Gularia village to help improve the socio-economic condition of the people.

8. The design for the local Baha’i House of Worship to be built in Bihar Sharif (Nalanda) has been unveiled. This will be the second Baha’i temple (Lotus Temple) in India after Delhi’s Lotus Temple.

9. Bihar government has decided to celebrate on 3rd June the birth anniversary of George Mathew Fernandes as a state function.

George Mathew Fernandes (3 June 1930 – 29 January 2019) was an Indian trade unionist, statesman, journalist, and member of Rajya Sabha from Bihar for a short while, and a member of Lok Sabha for a very long period, starting from Bombay (present-day Mumbai) in 1967 but mostly representing Bihar.
He was a key member of the Janata Dal and the founder of the Samata Party.
He was a defence minister in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government (1998–2004), when the Kargil War broke out between India and Pakistan, and India conducted its nuclear tests at Pokhran.
He died on 29 January 2019 at the age of 88. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan India’s second highest civilian award posthumously in 2020 in the field of Public Affairs.

Bihar CM Nitish Kumar in June 2020 unveiled, through video conferencing, a life-size statue of former defense minister George Fernandes on the occasion of his 90th birth anniversary.
The statue has been installed at the City Park, Muzaffarpur.

10. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a massive employment -cum- rural public works Campaign named ‘Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan’ to empower and provide livelihood opportunities in areas/ villages witnessing large number of returnee migrant workers affected by the devastating COVID-19. The Abhiyaan was flagged off from village Telihar, Block Beldaur, district Khagaria, Bihar on June 20 through Video-Conference.
An amount of Rs 50,000 Crores would be spent for building durable rural infrastructure under the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan.

The Abhiyaan will be undertaken in total 116 districts of India (32 districts of Bihar).

This Abhiyaan of 125 days, will work in mission mode, will involve focused implementation of 25 categories of works/ activities in 116 districts, each with a large concentration of returnee migrant workers in 6 states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Odisha.

11. ‘Sattar Ghat’ bridge which was recently inaugurated by CM Nitish Kumar is constructed at a cost of Rs 263.48 crore on Gandak River at Sattarghat under Kesaria block of East Champaran district.

12. The proposal to construct a bridge on Sone river in south-west Bihar will connect Panduka in Rohtas (Bihar) to Shrinagar in Garhwa district of Jharkhand and is to be built at an estimated cost of Rs 345 crore.

13. Union Home Minister Amit Shah in June 2020 addressed India’s first virtual rally ‘Bihar Jansamvad Rally’ through video conferencing.

14. The Election Commission (EC) used upgraded model of electronic voting machines (EVMs) for the Assembly polls in Bihar. This model, also called M3 version of the EVM, is tamper-proof and would become inoperative if tinkered with.