Current Affairs for UPSC IAS

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Assam government and the Bodo groups signed an agreement to redraw and rename the Bodoland Territorial Area District (BTAD) in Assam, currently spread over four districts of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalguri.

Special Secretary at the Chief Minister’s Office Ramakant Singh has instructed to pay scholarship in a week under the skill development scheme in the Left Wing Extremism affected districts to the ITI-trained students.

The NSCN (IM), the largest Naga group, is unwilling to sign an accord with the Centre without a separate Naga flag and constitution.

India continues to face many complex threats and challenges to its national security, a few of which are predictable and well-defined.

Parliament passed the National Investigation Agency (Amendment) Bill, 2019 to give a big push to India’s national security. The main aim of this new bill is to give more power to the National Investigation Agency or NIA, India's premier anti-terrorism agency. The Bill amends the NIA Act 2008.

A petition was filed by two Rohingya men against the government’s proposed move to deport their 40,000-strong community back to their native land of Myanmar. In this backdrop, the Supreme Court is now examining, whether the illegal immigrants can even be considered for ‘refugee’ status or not.

Recently,Dantewada MLA BheemaMandavi along with five people were killed after Naxals targeted the convoy at Shyamgiri.  The IED blast has occurred in Shyamgiri under Kuakonda Police Station.

• On February 13, Suicide bomber targets security convoy in Kabul. At least 12 killed, six wounded in a Taliban ambush that hit a convoy of security personnel in Kabul.
• On February 14, 40 CRPF personnel were killed in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir when a convoy in which they were travelling was attacked by a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) suicide bomber, who rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into one of the convoy’s buses on the Srinagar-Jammu highway.

Around 300 tribal people, along with rights activists, took part in a week-long bicycle rally, calling for peace in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, which has been mired with a decades-long violent conflict between Maoist rebels and security forces. The conflict has claimed more than 12,000 lives in the past two decades.

There has been increase in Maoists attacks in Chhattisgarh during elections, around one lakh security personnel have been deployed to ensure smooth conduct of elections even as Maoists have asked voters to boycott the assembly elections.