Thursday, March 11, 2010

10/03/2010

 

10/03/2010 : 1916 Maharshi Karve starts SNDT University in Pune, the first women's university, with five students

 

1937 Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit becomes first woman to hold a Union cabinet post

 

1947 Sarojini Naidu is first woman governor of independent India, in charge of United Provinces

 

1953 Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit scores again, becomes first woman president of the UN General Assembly

 

1956 Hindu Succession Act gives women right to hold property

 

1966 Indira Gandhi is India's first woman Prime Minister

 

1972 Kiran Bedi becomes the first woman IPS officer

 

1979 Mother Teresa wins the Nobel Peace Prize

 

1984 Bachendri Pal becomes the first Indian woman to climb Mount Everest

 

1992 The 73rd Constitutional amendment reserves 33% seats in rural and urban local bodies for women

 

1997 Arundhati Roy is first Indian woman to win Booker Prize

 

2005 Hindu Succession Act amended to give daughters of deceased person equal rights to inheritance

 

2007 Pratibha Patil becomes first woman President

 

2009 Meira Kumar is first woman Speaker of Lok Sabha

 

2010 Bill to reserve 33% seats for women in Parliament and legislative assemblies passed by RS

10/03/2010 : Women reservation 33% in Parliament and State Assesmblies passed in Rajya Sabha - The Bill, formally known as the 108th constitutional amendment

10/03/2010 : Budget 2010 - Total plan expenditure is slated to go up 18 per cent to Rs 3.73 lakh crore

10/03/2010 : Income Tax Return - Centralised Processing Centre at Bengaluru

10/03/2010 : Budget : The government has introduced a pilot project, called 'Sevottam', to provide single window system for registration of all applications, including those for redressal of grievances, as well as paper returns. Currently, the scheme is on in Pune, Kochi and Chandigarh. Four more centres will be added in 2010-11.

10/03/2010 : Budget : In line with the recommendations of the 13th Finance Commission, Mr Pranab Mukherjee presented a roadmap for fiscal consolidation and set the fiscal deficit target at 5.5 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) for 2010-11. The deficit for 2009-10 to be at 6.9 per cent of GDP , as against a comparable figure of 7.8 per cent of GDP in 2008-09. The target of 5.5 per cent for 2009-10 includes expenses on account of oil and fertilizer subsidies.

10/03/2010 : Budget : To spend 66 per cent of total expenditure on non-plan activities during 2010-11, compared to 70 per cent in 2009-10. The main reason for this is that the burden on account of Sixth Pay Commission report is off its back now.

10/03/2010 : Budget : To build the corpus of the National Clean Energy Fund set up earlier, FM announced a cess on coal production at a nominal Rs 50 per tonne. This will be levied on imported coal, too. Around 75 per cent of the power generated in the country is coal-based.

10/03/2010 : Budget : In another step at cutting domestic carbon emissions, the government increased the plan outlay for the Renewable Energy Ministry by 61 per cent to Rs 1,000 crore for 2010-11. The Ministry is implementing the ambitious National Solar Mission, aimed at setting up 20,000 MW of solar power capacity by 2020

10/03/2010 : Budget : Budget 2010 has also provided a concessional customs duty of five per cent for solar power generating equipment.

 

10/03/2010 : Budget : The government has targeted construction of national highways at the pace of 20 km a day.

10/03/2010 : Budget : Bharat Nirman, the six-fold action plan for rural infrastructure development, charted out in 2006 by the then UPA government, will enter the second year of its second phase with Rs 48,000 crore, with the bulk of the increase going to rural electrification, housing and roads.

 

The umbrella scheme, which has a clutch of six different programmes under it, had entered the second phase in 2009 with an allocation of Rs 40,900 crore. In 2010 it has gone up to Rs 48,000 crore.

 

The main areas covered under it are roads, houses, drinking water, irrigation, telephony and electricity in rural areas. The budget for the first phase was Rs 1,74,000 crore. But in the second phase, the road component alone is expected to cost Rs 1,32,000 crore, as per the Budget document.

10/03/2010 : Budget : The Pradhan Mantri Grameen Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), which targets to connect villages with a population of 1,000, has got an allocation of Rs 9,995 crore as against 2009-10 revised allocation of Rs 9,475 crore. The Yojana was launched on December 25, 2000 as a 100 per cent centrally sponsored scheme. But today it meets its expenses also through loans from the Asian Development Bank and World Bank.

10/03/2010 : Budget : In addition, an allocation of Rs 10,000 crore has been made as loan for PMGSY through the RIDF ( Rural Infrastructure Development Fund) window of NABARD ( National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development)

 

The PMGSY was to connect 66,000 habitations in the previous four years. The target now is to reach 1,67,000 habitations at a cost of Rs 1,32,000 crore by 2012.

10/03/2010 : Budget : The Bharat Nirman component on housing, called Indira Awas Yojana, which was to build 6 million dwellings in the four years ending 2009, now has a target of 12 million houses by 2014. The funds for this scheme implemented by the rural development ministry have gone up from Rs 7,918 crore in 2009-10 to Rs 8,996 crore in 2010-11.

 

About Rs 5,000 crore for this scheme will be provided by the National Investment Fund.

10/03/2010 : Budget : The funds for rural electrification have gone up in 2010-11 with fund transfers to Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana going up from Rs 3,100 crore to Rs 5,000 crore. The entire funding for the scheme is coming from the National Investment Fund.

 

The scheme was started with the aim of providing power connections to 100,000 villages and release electricity connections to 23 million rural BPL households in five years.

10/02/2010 : Budget : The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) will continue with its mammoth agenda of providing 100 days of work in the country's rural areas, drawing its oxygen mainly from the National Investment Fund (NIF). A major part of the scheme's allocation will come from the NIF for the second consecutive year. NIF draws money from disinvestment of government stake in public sector undertakings.

 

The allocation for NREGS has gone up marginally from Rs 39,100 crore in 2009-10 to Rs 40,100 crore in 2010-11. But the share of NIF component in NREGS funding has gone up from Rs 11,730 crore in 2009-10 (when the total allocation was Rs 39,100 crore) to Rs 18,768 crore in 2010-11 (against the total allocation of Rs 40,100 crore). Therefore, the government expenditure on NREGP has been declining.

 

The NIF proceeds for 2009-10, estimated at Rs 25,000 crore, will come on account of disinvestment of government stake in NHPC Ltd, NTPC Ltd, Oil India Ltd, Rural Electrification Corporation Ltd and NMDC Ltd. The NIF, which was constituted in 2009, is expected to part-fund social sector schemes till 2011-12.

 

The increased funding of Rs 1,000 crore will barely be enough to create the over 300,000 Panchayat Bhawans or Rajiv Gandhi Seva Kendras proposed by the Rural Development Ministry in every panchayat in the country, or to fund NGOs in these panchayats to help run the scheme.

10/03/2010 : Budget : Budget has extended the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) benefits to all NREGS beneficiaries who had worked for more than 15 days during the preceding financial year. The insurance coverage would be through the Rs 30 per year smart cards which would provide the entire family health insurance cover worth Rs 30,000.

10/03/2010 : Budget : The agriculture sector - unprecedented 21.6 per cent hike in the central plan allocation to address the supply side constrains that have led to high food inflation. Besides measures to boost production, stress has been laid on opening up of retail trade to reduce the wide differences between the farm gate, wholesale and retail prices. Tax sops to infrastructure have also been proposed to facilitate storage and safe handling of perishable foods until the retail points.

10/03/2010 : Budget : A four-pronged strategy has been mooted in the Budget to spur growth in farm production. It involves measures to

 

(1). raise agricultural production;

 

(2). reduce wastages;

 

(3). strengthen credit support to farmers; and

 

(4). lend a thrust to the food processing sector for value addition of farm produce.

 

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