Current Affair 1:

Presidential Election in India: How value of MLAs and MPs calculated?

 

The President of India is not directly elected by the citizens of the country.  He is elected directly by the representatives of people (i.e., Members of Parliament –MPs & Members of Legislative Assemblies – MLAs). Check the electoral college.

Eligibility to be the President of India

The following are the mandatory requirements for anyone to contest the election for the President of India.

• Must be a citizen of India
• Must have completed 35 years of age
• Must be eligible to be a member of the Lok Sabha.
• Must not hold any office of profit under the Government of India or the Government of any State or under any local government (Exceptions are the offices of President and Vice-President, Governor of any State and Ministers of Union or State)

The above is a part of Article 58:

 

Are there any other conditions to be fulfilled to contest?

Apart from the above conditions, the nomination paper of a candidate has to be signed by at least fifty (50) eligible voters as proposers and at least fifty (50) eligible voters as seconders. Here the voters are the MPs & MLAs and not citizens. A voter cannot propose or second more than one candidate. Ab ye kha likha h? Constitution main? NO. It is written in Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act, 1952.

What is the difference between a normal election & the Presidential election?

The one major difference between any normal general election and the Presidential election is the differential value of votes of various electors (voters). In any normal election, the value of the vote of every citizen is the same. His/her vote is counted as one vote.

But in the Presidential election, the value of the MP vote is different from the value of a MLA vote. Not just that, the value of a MLA vote from one state differs from the value of the MLA vote of another state. The value of all the votes put together is the value of the voters for the election.

How is the value of votes calculated?

The value of votes of electors (voters) is basically determined on the basis of population of the States. Since population figures are dynamic and keep changing every year, it has been decided through the 84th Constitutional Amendment, that until the population figures for the first census after 2026 are published (in other words, 2031 census), the population of the States for the purpose of this calculation will mean the population as per the 1971 census.

The Process for calculating the Value of MLA vote

The value of the vote of each MLA is calculated by dividing the population of the State as per 1971 Census, by the total number of elected members of the respective state assembly, and then to divide the quotient by 1000. Total Value of all members of each State Assembly is obtained by multiplying the number of seats in the Assembly by the number of votes for each member.

We will understand this by 2017 Presidential election.

Let us look at Telangana as an example.

Similar process is followed for all the states. For the 2017 Presidential election, the total value of the MLA votes is 5,49,495. The value of a MLA vote in individual states is in the table below.

The Process for calculating the Value of MP vote

The total value of votes of all the States is divided by the total number of elected members of Parliament (Lok Sabha 543+Rajya Sabha 233) to get the value of votes of each Member of Parliament or the MP. For 2017, this worked out to be 708. The value of a MP vote is substantially higher than the value of a MLA vote. It is in fact 3.5 times the value of a MLA’s vote in Uttar Pradesh where the value of MLA vote is maximum.

The Election Process

A ballot paper is given to each voter with the names of the contesting candidates, green ballot paper for MPs & Pink ballot paper for MLAs. This election happens through the Single Transferable Vote (STV).  Hence each voter can mark as many preferences, as the number of candidates contesting the election. These preferences for the candidates are to be marked by the voter, by marking the figures 1,2,3, 4, 5 and so on, against the names of the candidates, in the order of preference.

Current Affair 2:

New fossil discovery from Central India throws light on the reproductive biology of sauropod dinosaurs

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Not to go in much detail. But as it has been discovered in India, you need to have a basic information.

A team of Indian researchers, for the first time in the fossil history, has discovered an egg-in-egg or abnormal titanosaurid dinosaur egg from the Bagh area in Dhar District, Madhya Pradesh state (Central India).

The Upper Cretaceous Lameta Formation of Central India is long known for its dinosaur fossils (both skeletal and egg remains).

Until this new finding from India, no egg-in-egg abnormal fossil egg was found in dinosaurs and for that matter in other reptiles like turtles, lizards, and crocodiles.

The new pathological egg is a rare and important find as no ovum-in-ovo egg was found in reptiles until now and as it brings out significant information on whether dinosaurs had a reproductive biology similar to that of turtles and lizards or their immediate cousins’ crocodiles and birds.

The new find highlights the fact that central and western India hold great potential for dinosaur fossils which may offer important information on dinosaur oospecies diversity, nesting behavior and reproductive biology.

Current Affair 3:

What are carbon sinks?

 

Carbon sinks are places and/or products that sequester and store carbon as organic or inorganic compounds for different periods of time. Essentially, anything that absorbs more carbon than it emits into the atmosphere through natural or artificial processes can be considered a carbon sink.

In the pre-industrial era, carbon emitted into the atmosphere was usually balanced – on a global scale – by the accumulation of carbon in terrestrial and oceanic systems known as carbon sinks. But since humans began using fossil fuels to power industrialization in the 1960s, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere have risen by nearly 100 ppm (parts per million) to reach a record high of 400 ppm due to rapidly multiplying carbon sources.

What are natural and artificial carbon sinks?

Natural carbon sinks can be terrestrial – soil, forests, and grasslands – or aquatic, namely, the ocean. Currently, the oceans are the largest carbon reservoirs in the world.

Artificial carbon sinks

1. to convert rapidly growing urban areas into carbon sinks by using engineered timber instead of cement, steel, and other such materials. This approach aims to not only create new carbon sinks, but to also simultaneously lower carbon emissions by reducing the demand for cement, since cement manufacture currently contributes to 8% of global CO2 emissions.
2. Another idea for an artificial carbon sink is to capture CO2 directly from air or point sources (such as factories/industrial areas) and create a concentrated stream of CO2 for use in the production of carbon neutral fuels or carbon sequestration using various methods.
3. Mineral sequestration of CO2 is another carbon capture method that is being explored to create carbon sinks. In this, the carbon is trapped in the form of solid carbonate compounds in sandstone and basalt. Ongoing research projects are also investigating the potential of using mining waste for CO2 sequestration.

How do oceans act as carbon sinks? Read every point.

• The ocean, which is by far the largest carbon reservoir and sink, stores carbon in several different forms. The most abundant form is as dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC). This entered the seas over millennia through sea water interacting with sediments, land weathering, outgassing from the Earth’s interior (for example, through volcanic vents), and gas exchange with the atmosphere. The CO2 usually dissolves in seawater, where it exists as CO2, bicarbonate ions (HCO3–), and carbonate ions (CO3–).
• The intermediate and deep ocean is estimated to be the largest of the five carbon reservoirs in the ocean, the other four being the surface ocean, marine biota, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and sea surface sediments.
• Oceans also act as carbon sinks due to those actions of biological carbon pumps, which occur mainly in the surface layers of the ocean. Phytoplankton convert CO2 from the air and dissolved CO2 in seawater into biomass through photosynthesis.
• About 25% of this is particulate organic carbon (POC) that sinks through the water column. Most of the sinking POC is demineralized by microbes and less than 1% of the POC reaches the ocean floor by sedimentation to contribute to the carbon sink in the ocean floor.

Current Affair 4:

Newly developed ultrathin heteroprotein film

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A news from PIB. Have basic knowledge and see the terms used.

 

 

 

 

Scientists Scientists have developed ultra-thin heteroprotein films with excellent thermal, mechanical and pH stability which can pave the way for expanding applications of thin films in biomedical and food packaging industries. These films are much thinner as compared to the other protein or plastic films. They are soft and thin and have the advantage of being more flexible than the other films.

A research group has successfully developed ultrathin monolayer protein films consisting of two globular proteins: bovine serum albumin (BSA) and lysozyme (Lys). They used the technique called using Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) technique which gives the films thickness in the order of nanometer.

 

Films of such protein complex of BSA and Lys can be useful for fabricating highly stable biodegradable thin films of different protein complexes for expanding its applications in the area of thin-film technology.

Current Affair 5:

National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment 2021 Report

 

What our Union Minister says? These small images are very important. Read all three points.

NeSDA 2021 covers services across seven sectors – Finance, Labour & Employment, Education, Local Governance & Utility Services, Social Welfare, Environment and Tourism sectors.

NeSDA 2021 has shown clear progress for e-Governance services across the country. Improvement in the country’s e-Governance landscape may be summarized in the following key takeaways –

• Increase in e-Service Delivery
• Rise in use of Integrated / Centralized Portals for delivery of e-Services
• Improvement across assessment parameter scores

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