Daily GK Potion – 1st January 2015
- Delhi police launches safety app ‘Himmat’ for women
- Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday launched a mobile-phone based application for the safety of women in New Delhi.
- App Named ‘Himmat’ is an initiative by Delhi Police for women safety. The application was launched basically for the employed women who travelling alone sometimes late at night. Women can use its features to alert Delhi police in case of any threat.
- It can be downloaded from Delhi Police website – www.delhipolice.nic.in free of cost. Currently it support android only but soon it will be extended to other platforms also.
- New Railway Board chairman takes charge
- A.K.Mital took charge as chairman of the Railway Board and ex-officio secretary to the government of India.
- Mital succeeds the erstwhile incumbent Arunendra Kumar who retired on Dec 31st December 2014 from Railway Services.
- NITI Aayog to replace Planning Commission
- The 65-year-old Planning Commission was on Thursday replaced by a new body, NITI Aayog or National Institution for Transforming India.
- It will serve as a policy think-tank for the central as well as State governments and have Prime Minister as its Chairperson.
- The NITI Aayog will have a governing council comprising of all State Chief Ministers and Lt. Governors and will work towards fostering a ‘co-operative federalism’ for providing a “national agenda” to the Centre and States.
- The body will have a CEO and a Vice-Chairperson, to be appointed by the Prime Minister, in addition to some full-time members and two part-time members, while four Union Ministers would serve as ex-officio members.
- There would be specific regional councils, while experts and specialists from various fields would be there as “special invitees nominated by the Prime Minister“.
- Isro gives farewell to its ‘Man of Steel’ K Radhakrishnan
- The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) bid farewell to its chairman K Radhakrishnan who got retired on 31st December.
- Though Radhakrishnan’s tenure ended in August, his term was extended by four months till December 31 by the Centre “on functional grounds and in public interest”.
- With the 12 successful PSLV missions, the successful launch of GSLV with indigenous cryogenic stage, the Mars Orbiter Mission, LVM-3 experimental flight with CARE module, the six Insat/GSAT satellites, three navigation satellites and six earth observation satellites (including RISAT-1, the first microwave imaging satellite), Radhakrishnan is leaving Isro at its “most glorified pedestal ever”.