Indian Railways locomotive indigenously, AI-powered mobile app, Star rating of garbage-free cities

Minister of State (I/C) for Housing and Urban Affairs, hs informed that for the assessment year 2019-2020, a total of six cities have been certified as 5-Star (Ambikapur, Rajkot, Surat, Mysuru, Indore and Navi Mumbai), 65 cities as 3-Star and 70 cities as 1-Star.
The Star Rating Protocol was launched by the Ministry in January 2018 to institutionalize a mechanism for cities to achieve Garbage Free status, and to motivate cities to achieve higher degrees of cleanliness.
Five years ago, They introduced Swachh Survekshan (SS), the annual cleanliness survey for urban India that has proven immensely successful when it comes to improving urban cleanliness through a spirit of healthy competition.
To ensure that the Protocol has a SMART framework, we developed a three-stage assessment process.
Swachhata paving the way for a “Swachh”, “Swasth”, “Shashakt” and “Sampann” AtmaNirbhar New India.
Since its launch in 2014, Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U) has made significant progress in the area of both sanitation and solid waste management.

Students set to appear for exams by National Testing Agency can now take mock tests on their newly launched mobile app ‘National Test Abhyas’.
The App has been developed by NTA to enable candidates to take mock tests for upcoming exams such as JEE Main, NEET under the NTA’s purview.
The app has been launched to facilitate candidates’ access to high quality mock tests in the safety and comfort of their homes since there was a demand for making up the loss to students due to closure of educational institutions and NTA’s Test-Practice Centers (TPCs) due to the continuing lockdown.
Students across the country can use the App to access high quality tests, free of cost, in a bid to be fully prepared for the upcoming JEE, NEET and other competitive exams.
The tests can be easily downloaded.
The app will make available practice tests on smartphones or computers for all students in India irrespective of their level of access to devices and quality of network.
The app also has an offline mode where students, on downloading the mock tests, can attempt the test without the internet.
The app works on Android-based smartphones and tablets and can be downloaded from Google Play Store. The app will be soon available on iOS.

Indian Railways operationalises its most powerful 12000 HP made in India locomotive manufactured by Madhepura Electric Loco Factory situated in Bihar.
It is the first time, high horse power locomotive has been operationalised on broad gauge track in the world.
It was a proud moment for Indian Railways, as it became 6th country in the world to join the elite club of producing high horse power locomotive indegenously.
The locomotive has been produced under Make in India programme.
The locomotive has made its maiden commercial run between DeenDayalUpadhaya Station to Shivpur on 18.05.2020.
These high horse power locomotives will help to decongest the saturated tracks by improving average speed and loading capacity of freight trains.
The Madhepura factory is the largest integrated Green Field facility built to the highest standards of quality and safety with production capacity of 120 locomotives and spread across a massive 250 acres.
The project will create more than 10,000 direct and indirect jobs in the country.
The project started in 2018 and the Prime Minister of India inaugurated the project on 10th April’ 2018.

Source: PIB, The Hindu, IE

Bihar Budget 2020-21