• The Minister of State (IC) for Culture Shri Prahlad Singh Patel has recently led the programme organized to observe the Flag Satyagraha in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh.
• He hoisted the National Flag at Gandhi Bhavan, reminiscing the historic moments of the Jhanda Satyagraha held in Jabalpur in 1923 when the immortal martyrs first unfurled the flag at the Town Hall with great courage.

Flag / Jhanda Satyagraha

• It is a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience during the Indian independence movement.
• It focused on exercising the right and freedom to hoist the nationalist flag and challenge the legitimacy of the British Rule in India through the defiance of laws prohibiting the hoisting of nationalist flags and restricting civil freedoms.
• It was on March 18, 1923 that the first Tricolour was hoisted in Jabalpur, marking the start of ‘Jhanda Satyagraha’.
• With the observance of the All India Flag Day on June 18, 1923, the Jhanda Satyagraha assumed national complexion with Nagpur as its headquarters and “Nagpur Chalo” as its slogan.
• Later the movement gains more importance and spread to many other parts of India.

• The Quality Council of India (QCI), and the Association of Indian Manufacturers of Medical Devices (AiMeD) have recently added further features to the ICMED Scheme.

Indian Certification of Medical Devices (ICMED) Plus Scheme

• The scheme was launched for Certification of Medical Devices in 2016 by the Quality Council of India (QCI).
• The ICMED 13485 PLUS, as the new scheme has been christened, will undertake verification of the quality, safety and efficacy of medical devices.
• This scheme will be an end to end quality assurance scheme for the medical devices sector in India.
• It will go a long way in assisting the procurement agencies to tackle the challenges relating to the menace of counterfeit products and fake certification.
• This will also help in eliminating the circulation and use of sub-standard medical products or devices of doubtful origin that could prove to be serious health hazards.

• In Fiscal Year 2021, despite a stringent lockdown and a raging COVID-19 first wave, the gross tax revenue collected by the Centre increased over Fiscal Year 2020.
• However, the increase was made possible by a sharp rise in contributions from union excise duties.
• This compensated for the sharp drop in the share of corporate tax collection.
• In FY21, the share of income tax (23.2%) in the gross tax revenue exceeded the contribution from corporate tax (22.6%).
• The Central Goods and Services Tax also contributed a similar share (22.5%).
• The contribution from union excise duties rose sharply from 12% to 19.2% compensating for the loss in share from corporate tax which fell sharply from 27.7% to 22.6%.
• The shift in tax burden from the corporates to the masses has come at a time when the pandemic has led to many job losses and reduced income levels thereby pushing more people into poverty.

• The winner of the online auction conducted for the first seat on Blue Origin’s New Shephard will be a part of New Shephard’s first human flight on the 52nd anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing.

New Shephard

• It was named after astronaut Alan Shephard, the first American to go to space.
• New Shephard is meant to take tourists to space to experience microgravity that takes them 100 km above the Earth.
• New Shephard is a rocket system that has been designed to take astronauts and research payloads past the Karman line (the internationally recognized boundary of space).
• The idea is to provide easier and more cost-effective access to space meant for purposes such as academic research, corporate technology development and entrepreneurial ventures among others.
• The system is a fully reusable, vertical takeoff and vertical landing space vehicle that accelerates for 2.5 minutes before the engine cuts off.

• For the first time, the Indian Navy is participating in joint drills, IN – EUNAVFOR, with the European Union Naval Force.
• The exercise comprising warships from the French, Spanish and Italian navies, being held in the Gulf of Aden.
• EUNAVFOR and the Indian Navy converge on multiple issues including counter piracy operations and protection of vessels deployed under the charter of World Food Programme (UN WFP).
• The two also hold regular interactions through SHADE (Shared Awareness and De-confliction) meetings annually in Bahrain.
• It also underscores the shared values as partner navies, in ensuring freedom of seas and commitment to an open, inclusive and rules-based international order.

Cable Television Network Rules

• It provides for a three-level grievance redressal mechanism — self-regulation by broadcasters, self-regulation by the self-regulating bodies of the broadcasters, and oversight by an Inter-Departmental Committee at the level of the Union government.
• Various Self-regulatory bodies like News Broadcasters Standards Authority (NBSA) and Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC) will get legal recognition.
• At present, there is an institutional mechanism by way of an Inter-Ministerial Committee to address grievances of citizens relating to violation of the Programme/Advertising Codes under the Rules.

PASIPHAE

• Polar-Areas Stellar-Imaging in Polarisation High-Accuracy Experiment (PASIPHAE) is an international collaborative sky surveying project steered by the Institute of Astrophysics, Greece.
• It will be used in upcoming sky surveys to capture polarisation (B-mode signal) coming from very faint stars that are so far away that their polarisation signals haven’t been systematically studied.
• The distances to these stars will be obtained from measurements of the GAIA satellite.
• The survey will use two high-tech optical polarimeters to observe the northern and southern skies, simultaneously.

Election Petition

• The Election Commission’s role ends with the declaration of results i.e. once the Returning Officer has signed the final result sheet.
• The voter or the candidate can challenge the result through an election petition submitted to the High Court of the state in which the constituency is located.
• The election petition has to be filed within 45 days from the date of the poll results and nothing is entertained by courts after that.
• The Representative of the People Act of 1951 suggests that the High Court should try to conclude the trial within six months but it usually drags on for much longer.

Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India

• It has been published by Space Application Centre, ISRO, Ahmedabad.
• The Atlas provides state wise area of degraded lands for the time frame 2018-19.
• It was released on the occasion of the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, observed on 17 June.

World Competitiveness Index 2021

• Recently, the Institute for Management Development (IMD) has released the World Competitiveness Index 2021.
• It is an annual ranking which was first published in 1989.
• It measures the prosperity and competitiveness by examining four factors i.e. economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency, and infrastructure.
• It is led by Switzerland, while Sweden has moved up to the second position (from sixth last year).
• India has maintained 43rd rank on an annual World Competitiveness Index.
• Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) is a yearly report published by the World Economic Forum.