Telangana Affairs
Telangana: 1.5 lakh visually impaired voters to get Braille guides
In another step towards making the voting process easier for visually impaired electors, voters guides will be made available inBraillefor the next general . Officials said that nearly 1.5 lakh visually impaired voters InTelanganawill be benefited through the new initiative.
Currently, visually challenged voters have voter ID cards in Braille script and at the voting booth, they are also provided with ballot papers in Braille. With the new initiative coming into force, they can read the guidelines before going to the polling booth without depending on others.
TheElection Commission of Indiaasked the states to print the guides in regional languages. In Telangana, the commissioner and director, Welfare Of Disabled, has translated the guidelines from Hindi toTeluguand soon the same will also be printed in Braille script.
National and International Affairs
2021 PMAY-U Awards
The PMAY-U Award for Implementation and Innovation was instituted under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban, by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in 2019.
The PMAY-U was launched in 2015 to address the housing shortage in Indias urban areas.
There are 3 broad categories of these Awards:
State Awards, Municipal Corporations, Municipal Councils and Nagar Panchayats Awards
Special Category Awards
Beneficiary Awards
Ministry of Education releases report on Performance Grading Index for States/UTs for the year 2020-21
The Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education today released the Performance Grading Index (PGI) for States/UTs for 2020-21, a unique index for evidence based comprehensive analysis of school education system across State/UTs.
The Indian Education System is one of the largest in the world with about 14.9 lakh schools, 95 lakh teachers, and nearly 26.5 crore students from varied socio-economic backgrounds. DoSE&L devised PGI for States/UTs to provide insights and data driven mechanism on the performance and achievements of on the success of school education across all States/UTs. The prime objective of PGI is to promote evidence-based policy making and highlight course correction to ensure quality education for all. So far, DoSE&L has released PGI report for the year 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20. The present report is for the year 2020-21.
The PGI structure comprises of 1000 points across 70 indicators grouped into 2 categories viz., Outcomes, Governance Management (GM). These categories are further divided into 5 domains, viz., Learning Outcomes (LO), Access (A), & Facilities (IF), Equity (E) & Governance Process (GP).
Odishas common credit portal
SAFAL (Simplified Application for Agricultural Loans) is Indias first online Agricultural credit facilitation portal. This common credit portal eases access to over 300 term loan products provided for farmers and agri-entrepreneurs. These term loan products will be provided by more than 40 partner banks.
The portal acts as a one-stop solution for farmers and agri-entrepreneurs to access loans offered by public and , Regional Rural Banks, state Cooperative banks and small finance banks.