NATIONAL
CAA: The Supreme Court on January 22 gave the Centre four weeks to respond to pleas challenging the validity of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and said it will set up a five-judge Constitution bench to hear the petitions. SC said that it will not grant any stay on the CAA without hearing the Centre. A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde also restrained all high courts from hearing pleas on CAA till it decides the petitions. The bench said it will hear petitions related to Assam and Tripura separately as the problem with CAA in these two states is different from the rest of the country.
UP: The UP government will provide land subsidy to the proposed food park of Patanjali Group in Greater Noida. Patanjali is going to invest more than Rs 6,000 crore in the mega project spread over 91 acres of land in the National Capital Region (NCR). The decision was taken at the UP cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Yogi Adityanath on January 21. Subsidies granted to the company include stamp duty rebate of 25 per cent.
NGT: The National Green Tribunal asked the Central Pollution Control Board on January 22 to submit a compliance report on its order on guidelines enumerating locomotive standards for Railways. A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel directed the apex pollution monitoring body to submit a report in a month.
ISRO: The ISRO will undertake two unmanned missions in December 2020 and June 2021 before the launch of India’s maiden human spaceflight venture ‘Gaganyaan’ in December 2021, ISRO chairman K Sivan said on January 22. while speaking at the inaugural session of a symposium on “Human Spaceflight and Exploration – Present Challenges and Future Trends,” Sivan added that the Gaganyaan mission not only aims at India’s maiden human flight to space but also setting up a new space station for ‘continuous space human presence’.
INTERNATIONAL
APPLE: Apple Inc dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company’s iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations.
CPEC: Senior US diplomat Alice Wells has renewed the criticism of the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, emphasising that there is no transparency in the projects and it will increase cash-strapped Pakistan’s debt burden. while speaking at an event here on Januar 21 during her four-day visit to Pakistan, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia also said that companies blacklisted by the World Bank have got contracts under the CPEC.
Economy
GAIL: GAIL India Ltd has planned to invest over Rs 45,000 crore over the next five years to expand the National Gas Pipeline Grid and city gas distribution network to make an effort for greater use of environment-friendly fuel, its chairman Ashutosh Karnatak said. The gas pipelines are planned to take the fuel to the east and northeast regions as well as to consumers in the south as part of the government push to raise the share of natural gas in India’s energy basket to 15 per cent by 2030 from the current 6.2 per cent, he said.
OIL: Oil India Ltd (OIL) on January 22 announced that it has filed a clarificatory/modificatory petition in the Supreme Court against a Rs 48,000 crore demand raised by the telecom department on cumulative revenue of Rs 1.47 crore it had earned on an NLD telecom licence.”OIL had obtained a National Long Distance Service Licence (NLD Licence) to establish Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA System) for control, management, and protection of OIL’s pipeline network used for transportation of crude oil, natural gas, and petroleum products” the company said in a statement.
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