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UPSC Current Affairs Pointers brings you essential current affairs of the past week, every Monday, to aid you in your Prelims and Mains preparation for UPSC, State PCS, and other competitive examinations.
If you missed the UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | February 10 to February 16, 2025, from the Indian Express, read it here.
— The 8th Indian Ocean Conference was organised by India Foundation in association with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Oman on February 16-17, 2025 in Muscat, Oman.
— It was started by the India Foundation in 2016 in Singapore, with participation from 30 countries. The theme for this year of the Conference is Voyages to New Horizons of Maritime Partnership.
— The objective of the conference is to bring critical states and principal maritime partners of the region together on a common platform to deliberate upon the prospects of regional cooperation for Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR).
— Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the School of Ultimate Leadership (SOUL) conclave 2025 at Bharat Mandapam in the presence of Bhutan Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay.
— The SOUL is a privately funded leadership institution, located on the periphery of GIFT City in Gandhinagar, aimed at enabling leaders to become a positive force for societal benefit by adopting a new paradigm of leadership.
— It aims to bring together leaders from across various fields to share their life experiences, successes and failures with the youth to foster young leadership for a vibrant public life in diverse fields.
— Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar was elevated to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) on 17th February 2025. Kumar was appointed to the EC on March 14, 2024, less than two months after he retired from the IAS.His tenure as CEC will last till January 26, 2029.
— Vivek Joshi, a 1989-batch IAS officer of the Haryana cadre, was appointed Election Commissioner (EC). Now, the three-member Election Commission comprises Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Prakash, EC Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, and EC Vivek Joshi.
— The new CEC is being appointed under a new law — Chief Election Commissioner And Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service And Term of Office) Act, 2023. This law lays down procedures for the appointment of both CECs and ECs.
— Under the Act, a search committee headed by the Law Minister (currently Arjun Ram Meghwal) and comprising two senior bureaucrats serving as secretaries to the Government of India must first draw up a shortlist of five candidates.
— This shortlist is then sent to a Selection Committee made up of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and a Cabinet Minister nominated by the PM.
— The Supreme Court has stayed the Lokpal’s January 27 order which held it had the power to look into complaints against sitting judges of High Courts.
— The idea of a Lokpal — the central anti-corruption ombudsman — first came up in 1963 during a discussion on Budget allocation of the Union Law Ministry.
— The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, subsequently came into force on January 16, 2014. The Act provides for establishing a Lokpal headed by a Chairperson, who is or has been a Chief Justice of India, or is or has been a judge of the Supreme Court, or an eminent person who fulfills eligibility criteria as specified. Of its other members, not exceeding eight, 50% are to be judicial members, provided that not less than 50% of the members belong to the Scheduled Castess, Scheduled Tribes, OBCs, minorities, and women.
— The Lokpal Act covers a wide range of public servants — from the Prime Minister, ministers, and MP, to groups A, B, C, and D officers of the central government. “Lokpal shall inquire or cause an inquiry to be conducted into any matter involved in, or arising from, or connected with, any allegation of corruption made in a complaint” in respect of the Prime Minister, the Act says.
— The Lokpal chairperson and the members are appointed for a term of five years or serve till they are 70 years old, whichever is earlier. The first Lokpal chairperson was former Supreme Court Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose, who had assumed office in March 2019. Last year, Former Supreme Court Justice AM Khanwilkar was appointed as the ‘Lokpal of India’.
— Recently, the Women and Child Development Minister Annpurna Devi has informed that the government has written to states inviting proposals to establish ‘Nari Adalats’.
— The Nari Adalat scheme under the WCD Ministry entails groups of women at the gram panchayat level resolving grievances of women who have been denied their rights. The members of the Nari Adalat – around seven to 11 members called ‘nyaya sakhis’ – are nominated by the gram panchayat.
— The Scheme is running in 50 gram panchayats each in J&K and Assam, where it began on a pilot basis in 2023. In 2023-24, the WCD Ministry released a little over `20 lakh each to the two states to implement the scheme.
— Nari Adalat is the component of the Mission Shakti. Mission Shakti was formulated by the WCD ministry as an umbrella scheme for the safety, security, and empowerment during the 15th Finance Commission period from 2021-22 to 2025-26. It has two main verticals: Sambal (for safety and security) and Samarthya (for empowerment).
— Mission Shakti, as mentioned on the ministry’s website, aims to provide all women and girls, including those who are differently-abled, socially and economically marginalized, and from vulnerable groups in need of care and protection, with short-term and long-term services and information for their holistic development and empowerment.
— The Amir of the State of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani paid a State Visit to India on 17-18 February 2025.
—They decided to elevate their ties to a “strategic partnership”, double the target of bilateral trade to USD 28 billion in the next five years, and bring Qatari investment of USD 10 billion to India.
— Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has $1.5 billion FDI in India, and the joint statement said that the Qatar side announced a commitment to invest USD 10 billion in India.
— With this, India has signed strategic partnerships with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
India’s Collaboration with Gulf Countries
— Historically, the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE)—and Iran and Iraq have been the primary oil and gas suppliers to India contributing nearly 55-60 per cent of total oil and gas imports.
— The Gulf countries have been among India’s top petroleum suppliers since the 1980s and have remained the most dependable suppliers despite the fluctuations in the international oil and gas market and supply chains.
— In 2023-24, of the total US$1.11 trillion foreign trade, US$208.48 billion came from the Gulf and West Asia region, comprising 18.17 percent of India’s foreign trade. Notably, 14.28 percent of this came from the six GCC countries.
— India is Qatar’s second-largest trading partner, with bilateral trade of about $14 billion in 2024.
— The government is considering increasing the insurance cover for bank deposits from the current limit of Rs 5 lakh. The deposit insurance cover is offered by the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC), a specialised division of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
— The objective of the DICGC is to protect “small depositors” from the risk of losing their savings in case of a bank failure. The insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh per depositor is for all accounts held by the depositor in all branches of the insured bank.
— DICGC insures all commercial banks, including branches of foreign banks functioning in India, local area banks, regional rural banks, and cooperative banks. However, primary co-operative societies are not insured by the DICGC.
— The DICGC does not provide insurance for deposits by foreign, central, and state governments, and for inter-bank deposits.
— The premium for deposit insurance is borne by the insured bank. DICGC collects premiums from member financial institutions at a flat or differentiated rate based on the bank’s risk profile.
— Deposit insurance was introduced in India in 1962, and coverage has thus far been enhanced six times — from Rs 1,500 per depositor held in the same right and same capacity at all the branches of the insured bank to Rs 5 lakh now.
— The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) informed that no further projects are being taken up under Bharatmala Pariyojana due to delays and cost overruns.
— The Project, Bharatmala Pariyojana Phase-1, which received Cabinet approval in October 2017, entails a total length of 34,800 km in 31 States and Union Territories, and covers over 550 districts.
— It looked to improve connectivity, particularly on economic corridors, border areas and far flung areas with an aim of quicker movement of cargo and boosting exports.
— On Monday, Delhi witnessed the strongest earthquake of magnitude 4 in at least five years, data from the National Centre of Seismology showed.
— Delhi lies in what is known as the Aravalli-Delhi Fold Belt, a seismically-active geological belt extending from southern and eastern Rajasthan to Haryana and Delhi.
— India’s official earthquake hazard map puts Delhi in Zone 4, the second highest classification of areas based on their susceptibility to shaking experienced during an earthquake.
— Zone 4 in India includes areas that are expected to experience MSK-8-level intensity during an earthquake. The MSK, or Medvedev-Sponheuer-Karnik scale is a measure of intensity, rather than strength, or energy released, which is described by magnitude.
— MSK-8 means the area is vulnerable to major damage being caused to buildings and other infrastructure. Zone 5, the most vulnerable areas in India, correspond to MSK-9 levels of intensity or higher. Read more.
— The country’s first ‘bio bank’ in a zoo is set up at Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park, better known as Darjeeling Zoo.
— In collaboration with the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), under the Ministry of Science and Technology, the facility collects and preserves cell and tissue samples from endangered animals, as well as reproductive cells from deceased animals.
— These can be used for future research and potentially even bring back critically endangered species that have gone extinct or are on the verge of extinction.
— A 23-year-old Venezuelan kayaker, Adrián Simancas, was briefly swallowed by a humpback whale. The video of the incident shows the whale surfacing, engulfing Simancas and his yellow kayak for a few seconds before letting him go.
— There are mainly two families of whales: baleen whales and toothed whales.
— There are 14 species of baleen whales including blue whales, humpback whales, and grey whales. Instead of having teeth, these whales have baleen, which is essentially a filter-feeding system inside their mouth.
— Baleen is made of keratin — the same protein that makes up human hair and fingernails. Baleen whales use this system to filter small prey such as krill, plankton, and small fish from the water.
— Toothed whales have teeth. There are more than 70 species of these whales including sperm whales, beaked whales, killer whales, and dolphins.
— Both baleen whales and toothed whales cannot swallow humans. Sperm whales are an exception to this. They are the only whales in the world that have large enough throats to swallow a human.
— According to BBC analysis of data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the combined extent of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice dropped to 15.76 million sq km, down from the previous five-day record low.
— Sea ice refers to the free-floating ice in the polar regions. While it generally expands during the winter and melts in the summers, some sea ice remains year-round. Note that this is different from icebergs, glaciers, ice sheets, and ice shelves, which form on land.
— Sea ice plays a crucial role in cooling the planet by trapping existing heat in the ocean, and thus precluding it from warming the air above. Therefore, a reduction in sea ice cover can have disastrous consequences for Earth.
— A CAG report on the functioning of the CAMPA in Uttarakhand in the 2019-2022 period showed that Rs 13.86 crore was diverted for various activities other than compensatory afforestation.
— Compensatory Afforestation seeks to ensure that forest lands getting ‘diverted’ for non-forest purposes, like industrial or infrastructure development, is mandatorily accompanied by afforestation effort on at least an equal area of land.
— While the plantation exercise on new lands cannot be compared with the fully grown forests getting diverted, compensatory afforestation — made a legal requirement through the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act of 2016.
— The law acknowledges the fact that newly afforested land cannot be expected to immediately start delivering the range of goods and services that the diverted forests were providing. As a result, project developers are also asked to pay for the Net Present Value (NPV) of the forests being cleared, based on a calculation decided by an expert committee.
— All this money is meant to be spent solely on increasing, or improving the quality of, forest cover in the country, or on works that help this objective. The money is parked in special funds created for this purpose at the Central and state levels. CAMPA is constituted to manage this money, and to use it for the designated purposes.
— Microsoft has announced the arrival of Majorana 1, a new quantum chip that produces more reliable and scalable qubits than its predecessors. Qubits are the building blocks of quantum computers.
— Microsoft’s purported breakthrough revolves around engineering a new type of particle known as Majorana. These Majorana particles have been fabricated using topological conductors and they exist in a topological state, which differs from traditional states of matter such as solid, liquid, and gas.
— Topoconductors are made by combining indium arsenide (a semiconductor) and aluminium (a superconductor). When cooled to near absolute zero and tuned with magnetic fields, the semiconductor is married with superconductivity.
(Just FYI: Noting historical personalities’ anniversaries aids UPSC prep. UPSC often includes such personalities in questions, so revisiting their lives refreshes your static syllabus.)
— Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Jayanti is marked on February 19, the birth anniversary of Shivaji. He was born on February 19, 1630.
— The celebration of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Jayanti began in 1870 after discovering his tomb at Raigad Fort. It was further elaborated by freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak, to bring Shivaji Maharaj’s contributions to public consciousness during India’s struggle for independence.
— The US Senate has confirmed Kash Patel as the new Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director.
— Kashyap Pramod Patel or Kash Patel was born to Gujarati-Indian parents in New York’s Long Island. He was raised a Hindu and has described a “very deep connection” with India.
(Just FYI: With the unpredictability of the UPSC examinations and questions like the ICC World Test Championship question 2021, you can’t be sure of anything. It is wise to know what it is and not go into too much detail.)
— Olympian Manu Bhaker has been announced as the winner of the BBC Indian Sportswoman Of The Year (ISWOTY) Award.
— Avani Lekhara won the BBC Para-Sportswoman of the Year for her historic achievements in para-shooting.
— Bourbon: The Indian government has notified a significant tariff cut on bourbon, a barrel-aged American whiskey made primarily from corn. According to US law, for a whiskey to be labelled bourbon, it must be made in the US; have a “mashbill” — the combination of grains used — comprising at least 51% corn; be aged for at least 2 years in brand new barrels made of white oak, and charred on the inside; be bottled at 80 to 125 proof (40% to 62.5% alcohol by volume); and contain no additional colour or flavouring.
(Note: The best way to remember facts for UPSC and other competitive exams is to recall them through MCQs. Try to solve the following questions on your own.)
(A) Consider the following statements:
1. The Election Commission of India is a five-member body.
2. Union Ministry of Home Affairs decides the election schedule for the conduct of both general elections and bye-elections.
3. The Election Commissioner is appointed by a Selection Committee made up of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and a Cabinet Minister nominated by the PM.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 2 only
(c) 2 and 3 only
(d) 3 only
(B) Majorana 1, a new quantum chip, is developed by which of the following?
(a) OpenAI
(b) Meta
(c) Microsoft
(d) NVIDIA
(C) Consider the following statements:
1. As per a recent amendment to the Indian Forest Act, 1927, forest dwellers have the right to fell the bamboo grown on forest areas.
2. As per the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, bamboo is a minor forest produce.
3. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forests Rights) Act, 2006 allows ownership of minor forest produce to forest dwellers.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
Mail at khushboo.kumari@indianexpress.com for your answers, queries, and suggestions.
Previous Articles
UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | February 10 to February 16, 2025
UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | February 3 to February 9, 2025
UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | January 27 to February 2, 2025
UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | January 20 to January 26, 2025
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