Nitin Gadkari launches mobile app ‘Harit Path’ to monitor plantation along national highways

• The Union Minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari has launched a mobile app called ‘Harit Path’ on 21 August 2020, via video conference while chairing a meeting to review ‘New Green Highways Policy (Plantation)’ and discuss use of new technologies in road construction.
• The app ‘Harit Path’ has been developed by the National Highways authority of India (NHAI) to monitor the plantation and transplantation of trees along the highways, through geo-tagging and web-based GIS enabled monitoring tools.
• The app will allow to monitor the location, growth, species details, maintenance activities, targets and achievements of each of its field units for each and every plant under all plantation projects.

NPCI Launches AI virtual assistant ‘PAi’ to create product awareness

• The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) has launched an artificial intelligence (AI) based chatbot called PAi, to create awareness around its products like FASTag, RuPay, UPI, AePS on a real time basis.
• PAi is developed by Bengaluru based startup CoRover Private Limited.
• The AI virtual assistant, PAi will be available round the clock to provide accurate information on NPCI products.
• Customers can ask queries in English and Hindi, via text or voice on the websites of NPCI, RuPay, and UPI Chalega.

Tamil Nadu has appointed India’s first-ever woman ambulance driver under a new initiative by CM
Palaniswami. M Veeralakshmi was appointed driver of one of the newly launched ‘108’ ambulances in Tamil
Nadu

RBI approves appointment of CoD to run Dhanlaxmi Bank till appointment of CEO

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has approved a three-member interim committee of directors (CoD), to run the private sector lender, Dhanlaxmi Bank, in the capacity of the Managing Director & CEO till a new MD & CEO takes charge
• This decision was taken after the shareholders voted out the bank’s MD and CEO Sunil Gurbaxani on 30 September 2020.
• The committee of directors (CoD) has G Subramonia Iyer as its Chairman, while G Rajagopalan Nair and P K Vijayakumar are its other two members.
• However, RBI has approved this interim arrangement for only four months, within which the bank will have to complete the process of identification and appointment of a new Managing Director & CEO.

Somalia

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics on 6th October 2020.
One half of the award has been given to Roger Penrose for black hole discovery; and the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez.
UK’s Roger Penrose has been awarded “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”
America’s Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez have jointly won “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.

Time Magazine has released the TIME 100 Most Influential People List 2020. Prime Minister of India, Shri
Narendra Modi is the only politician on the list. He has been named in this for the fourth time since coming in
power in 2014.
The List has named people in five categories- Pioneers, Artists, Leaders, Titans, Icons.
The following Indians have also been named in this list:
Professor Ravindra Gupta (Pioneer)– is a Professor of Clinical Microbiology and has worked for the cure of
HIV.
Ayushmann Khurrana (Artists)
Bilkis (Icons)– the ‘dadi from Shaheen Bagh’

Bollywood’s most iconic personality, Amitabh Bachchan,
has been signed as the first-ever brand ambassador of
IDFC FIRST Bank.

Induslnd Bank has topped the list of highest increase in
brand value among global banks, according to The
Banker’s Top 500 Banking Brands 2020 report.
 As per the report, the brand value of Induslnd Bank has
increased by 122% over the past 1 year. This is the
highest growth for any bank across the world.
 IndusInd Bank is headquartered in Pune.

The Reserve Bank of India on April 09, 2020 launched a
twitter campaign urging bank customers to adopt digital
modes of payment that are convenient and safe.
 The face of the campaign is Bollywood actor Amitabh
Bachchan.
 The RBI, through the campaign, reiterated the multiple
digital payment options such as NEFT, IMPS, UPI and
BBPS that are available 24*7.

Kotak Mahindra Bank has introduced the video-KYC
facility for customers opening savings account on Kotak
811 platform.
 With this, Kotak Mahindra Bank has become the first
Indian bank to offer video-based “zero-contact”
onboarding service.
 RBI has introduced the notification regarding Videobased
KYC in January 2020. With Video KYC, verification
of documents, signature are completed via a video call
with a representative from the bank without any
physical interface.

ICICI Bank has launched a fully digital overdraft facility
for its Salary Account customers to get approval for
overdraft (OD) instantaneously and in a paperless
manner.
 The facility called, ‘Insta Flexicash’, will provide end-toend
fully digital experience to the customers using the
Bank’s internet banking platform.

Usha Thorat

Some major points related to this scheme are:
 Maximum limit of a payment transaction will be Rs 200.
(For a single transaction.)
 The total limit for offline transactions on an instrument
shall be Rs 2,000, at any point of time. Resetting of the
limit shall be allowed in online mode with AFA.
 Payments could be made using cards, wallets or mobile
devices or through any other channel. Payments may be
made in remote or proximity mode.

Rs 30 crore

Rs 7.5 crore

Actress Mishti Mukherjee passes away due to kidney failure at 27 Bollywood actress Mishti Mukherjee

IISc top Indian

D. P. Singh

‘Amazing Ayodhya’

Reliance Retail acquires majority stake in online pharmacy Netmeds for Rs 620 crore

The fourth edition of the Global Ayurveda Summit was inaugurated by the Vice President M Venkaiah
Naidu through video-conferencing on 15 September 2020.
The theme for Global Ayurveda Summit 2020 is “Emerging Opportunities for Ayurveda during Pandemic”

8th India-Sri Lanka Maritime Exercise SLINEX-20 to begin in Trincomalee from October 19

World Bank

• Finland based telecom company Nokia has been selected by NASA as its partner to build the first cellular network on the moon.

13th Aero India-21 to be held in Bengaluru in Feb 2021

2021 to 2025

Mumbai has become the first city in India to have women symbols on traffic signals and signage, as a
symbolic gesture towards gender equality in public spaces.

India’s first lichen park developed in Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand

• Uttar Pradesh has emerged as the top destination for attracting the highest number of domestic tourists visiting the state in 2019 as per the Indian Tourism Statistics (ITS), 2020, released by the Ministry of Tourism.

Meghalaya

Rajasthan launches campaign ”Pure for Sure” to ensure purity of milk & dairy products

Gurpreet Sandhu (Mens Category) & Sanju Yadav (Womens Category) Declared Winners of AIFF Player
of The Year Awards

10 August

India extends USD 15 million aid to Sri Lanka for promoting Buddhist ties

25 Sept- 2020 theme : “Transforming global health“.

• Men’s Single – Rafael Nadal (Spain) beat Novak Djokovic (Serbia)

The RBI introduced clean note policy in 1999 asking banks not to pass on the soiled, torn or scribbled notes to the customers and deposit the same with the RBI and do away with stapling of note packets and to introduce banding the packets with paper/polythene bands so that the life of the currency notes is increased

Small accounts are valid for a period of 12 months initially which may be extended by another 12 months if the person provides proof of having applied for an Officially Valid Document.

The Rupee denominated bonds can only be issued in a country and can only be subscribed by a resident of a country that is a member of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) or a member of a FATF-Style Regional bod

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)- Paris, France

Finland- Helsinki, Euro