Vacate Office in New Delhi’: India asks UNMOGIP, the UN Observer on J&K

Indian Government has asked United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to vacate its Government accommodations in New Delhi.
Reacting to this, Pakistan said that such steps would not change the legal status of the Kashmir dispute and that it never accepted Kashmir’s accession to India. It said that as long as the Kashmir dispute is not resolved, the UN Security Council mandate remains.
In response to Pakistan’s statements, India said that it believes in moving forward than looking behind and discussing decade old issues. India clarified that the move on UNMOGIP was consistent with efforts to rationalize the UN body’s presence in India. It said that the measure was in line with India’s long-standing view that UNMOGIP has outlived its relevance.
India believes that the UN body had little significance after India and Pakistan inked the Shimla pact in 1972 on resolving the Kashmir dispute bilaterally. However, UN held that UN Security Council resolution mandates the body to monitor and observe the border and report violations of a cease-fire agreement between India and Pakistan.
UNMOGIP in India insisted that it will continue its operations in India in line with its original mandate. The body is now searching for new office to rent.
India had provided UNMOGIP a plush accommodation in New Delhi free of charge 40 years ago. The UN body also has offices in Islamabad and Muzaffarabad, the main city in the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir.

Rich nations should capitalize Green Climate Fund: India

Expressing concerns over the empty coffers of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), India urged rich countries to give their consent to a road-map for its capitalization by 2015 – the year the world will have a universal global climate treaty.
Speaking at the ‘Major Economies Forum’ (MEF) in Paris, India’s Environment minister Prakash Javadekar also suggested that part of GCF, which was launched in 2009-10, should be used for funding critical technologies and buying Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) so that it can be made available to developing nations free of cost.
He referred to the annual Budget to inform that India had had taken a number of measures to fight climate change including earmarking Rs 100 crore for National Adaptation Fund, launching of mission for Himalayan region, Clean Ganga mission and hike in cess on coal from Rs 50 a tonne to Rs 100 a tonne.
Green Climate Fund (GCF)
GCF is a fund within the framework of the UNFCCC set up as a mechanism to transfer money from the developed nations to the developing countries, in order to help the developing nations in adaptation and mitigation practices to tackle climate change. The GCF is based in the new Songdo district of Incheon, South Korea. It is managed by a Board of 24 members.
The GCF will support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing nations. It intends to be the fulcrum of efforts to increase Climate Finance of $100 billion a year by 2020.

6th BRICS Summit: India’s PM Modi flies to Brazil

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has flown to Brazil to participate in the sixth annual BRICS summit.
The BRICS summit – a multilateral forum comprising of the upcoming economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – will be the first occasion that the Prime Minister will be interacting with world leaders after assuming office in May 2014.
The 2-day summit will be held in the cities of Fortaleza and Brasilia in Brazil.
 India’s key agendas for this summit:

1. BRICS BANK: The key agenda will be establishing a new development bank on the lines of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. The idea was first talked about at the BRICS meet in New Delhi in 2012.

2. CONTINGENT FUNDS: With a corpus of $100 billion the proposed bank will finance projects for infrastructure projects in emerging, developing nations and will compete with the west dominated IMF and World Bank.

3. Who will host BRICS BANK:  With both India and China vying to host the headquarters for the proposed bank, the contentious issue will be discussed.

4. INDIA-CHINA on security: India is likely to take up the matter of security of India’s Northern and Eastern borders that it shares with China. PM Modi, who will have bilateral meetings with all BRICS leaders, will meet Chinese President, Xi Jinping.

Highlights from Railway Budget 2014-15

Union Railway Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda presented his first Railway Budget in Parliament. Below are the highlights of this Budget:

• No new hike in passenger fares and freight charges
• Bullet train in Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector
• Diamond quadrilateral for high speed trains
• Proposal to enhance speed of trains to 160-200 km/hr in 9 sectors
• Online booking to support 7,200 tickets/minute; to enable 1.2 lakh users log in simultaneously
• Revamp of reservation system, ticket-booking through mobile phones, post offices to be promoted
• Online platform for unreserved tickets
• Stations to have Combo parking-platform tickets
• Women RPF Constables to escort ladies coaches; 4,000 women constables to be inducted
• Retiring room facility to be extended to all stations
• Battery powered Cars for differently-abled and senior citizens at major stations
• Feedback services through IVRS on quality of food
• Food can be ordered through SMS, phone; Food courts at major stations
• Cleanliness budget increased by 40% over last year
• CCTVs to be used at stations for monitoring cleanliness
• Forming a corpus fund for stations’ maintenance
• RO drinking water at some stations and trains
• Automatic door closing in mainline and sub-urban coaches
• 58 new trains and extension of 11; 864 additional EMUs to be started in Mumbai over 2 years
• FDI in railway projects, except in operations
• FDI, domestic investments in rail infrastructure
• Office-on-Wheels: Internet & workstation amenities on select trains
• WiFi in A1, A category stations and in select trains
• Railways university for technical and non-technical subjects
• Some stations to be built to international standards through PPP model
• Parcel traffic to be segregated to separate terminals to make passenger traffic unhampered
• Loss per passenger per kilometre up from 10% in 2000-01 to 23% in 2012-13
• Use of Solar energy at major stations
• Highest ever plan outlay of Rs. 65,455 crore for 2014-15
• Expenditure in 2014-15 pegged at Rs. 149,176 crore.