Karnataka’s 1st 11.5-megawatt power plant being set up at Bidadi

December 4, 2020

1. India invites UK’s Johnson as 2021 Republic Day chief guest

United Kingdom Prime Minister, Boris Johnson is expected to be the chief guest at 2021 Republic day with Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally inviting him.
Johnson, on his part, has invited PM Modi to the G-7 summit in the United Kingdom next year. The last British prime minister at the Republic Day parade was John Major in 1993.

New Zealand has declared a “climate emergency” and promised to make its public sector carbon neutral by 2025.
New Zealand now joins 32 other countries that have declared a climate emergency. They include Japan, Canada, France and the United Kingdom.
Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern told legislators that the climate emergency declaration was “an acknowledgement of the next generation – an acknowledgement of the burden that they will carry if we do not get this right and do not take action now”.

In Karnataka, Chief Minister, BS Yediyurappa laid the foundation stone for an 11.5-megawatt power plant based on municipal waste in Bidadi, Bengaluru.
It is first of its kind power plant in the state being set up by the Karnataka Power Corporation Limited (KPCL) and will help in converting 600 tonnes of municipal waste into 11.5-megawatt energy.
This power plant will add 80.59 million units of power to the existing power grid. The power plant project is being constructed at a cost of Rs. 260 crore and is likely to be operational by 2022.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath rang the bell at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), to mark the listing of bonds of Lucknow Municipal Corporation on the exchange.
The bonds of LMC were launched on November 13, with a coupon rate of 8.5 per cent and had tenure of 10 years. The issuance had garnered 4.5 times subscription.
Lucknow is the 9th city in India and first from UP, to have raised municipal bonds for fundraising. It is also the first city to issue municipal bond after the launch of Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) scheme.
Lucknow Municipal Corporation is the first civic body from North India to issue a bond on BSE.
The funds raised through the bond will be invested in various infrastructure schemes, being implemented under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) Scheme, in Lucknow.
Ghaziabad will be the next city of the state to issue a municipal bond and it will be followed by Pragyaraj, Varanasi, Agra and Kanpur.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued an order to HDFC Bank with regard to certain incidents of outages in the internet banking, mobile banking and payment utilities of the lender over the past 2 years, the private sector bank informed to the stock exchanges.
The RBI also noted the recent outages in the HDFC Bank’s internet banking and payment system on November 21, 2020, owing to a power failure in the primary data centre.
All launches of the Digital Business generating activities planned under its program ‐Digital 2.0 (to be launched) and other proposed business generating IT applications and sourcing of new credit card customers.
In addition to this, the order also states that HDFC Bank’s board should examine the lapses and fix accountability.

Lt Gen Rajeev Chaudhary has been appointed as the 27th Director General of Border Roads Organisation (BRO).
His appointment is effective from 1st December 2020. Lt Gen Chaudhary succeeds Lt Gen Harpal Singh who has been appointed as the new Engineer-in-Chief of the Indian Army.
The BRO is responsible for construction and maintenance of all border roads including those along the frontiers with China and Pakistan.

In the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2020, India has been ranked at 8th spot globally in the list of countries most affected by terrorism in 2019.
The GTI score of India is 7.353 out of 10. India recorded 277 Deaths, 439 Injuries & 558 Incidents due to Terrorism in 2019.
With a score of 9.592, Afghanistan has topped the index as the worst terror impacted nation among the 163 countries.
It is followed by Iraq (8.682) and Nigeria (8.314) at second and third place respectively.
Qatar (0.014) took the 133rd Rank followed by Uzbekistan (0.010) in the 134th Rank and around 29 Countries (score of 0.000) took the 135th Rank which means they are Least Affected Countries or Face No Impact due to Terrorism.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Government of India have inked $50 million policy-based loan agreement to improve financial management procedures and operational efficiencies in West Bengal.
Titled as the ‘West Bengal Public Finance Management Investment Programme’, the project will help to achieve more fiscal savings, promote informed decision making, and improve service delivery in the state.

Virat Kohli became the fastest to reach 12,000 runs in One-day International cricket. Kohli breached the mark in the third ODI against Australia in Canberra.
He got to the milestone in his 242nd inning thus bettering the previous record set by Sachin Tendulkar, who got his 12000th run in his 300th inning.
Kohli is the second-highest scorer for India in ODIs behind Tendulkar’s 18,426 from 463 ODIs.
The India captain also holds the record for the fastest batsman (in terms of innings) to 10,000 and 11,000 runs in ODIs. Kohli reached 11,000 runs in 222 innings and became the fastest to breach the 10000-run mark by doing so in his 205th inning.

The owner of MDH Masala, Dharampal Gulati passed away. He was born in 1923 in Sialkot, Pakistan. He was fondly called ‘dalaji’ and ‘Mahashayji’.
A school dropout, Dharampal Gulati joined his father’s spice business in the early days. Back in 2019, the government honoured him with Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award in the country.