India to host next IBSA summit

India will host the 7th IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) summit in 2015. The announcement was made following a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South African President Jacob Zuma in Brasília on Wednesday.

The two leaders met at the sidelines of the interaction between the BRICS leadership and leaders from Latin American countries.

This will be the third time New Delhi will be hosting the IBSA summit since it started in 2006. While the inaugural edition of the summit was held in Brazil, India played host to the third edition in 2008 and the sixth in 2013. IBSA is a trilateral initiative between India, Brazil and South Africa “to promote, inter-alia, South-South cooperation and exchange.” The platform was announced, following a meeting of Foreign Ministers of the three countries in Brasilia in 2003, through the adoption of the Brasilia Declaration.

The IBSA summit involves consultations at the heads of state-level while meetings between Ministers and officials are held at the Trilateral Joint Commission and Focal Point levels respectively.

Five new Governors has been appointed by the President of India

 

The President has been pleased to appoint the following as Governors:-

1. Shri Ram Naik as the Governor of Uttar Pradesh
2. Shri Balramji Dass Tandon as the Governor of Chhattisgarh
3. Shri Keshari Nath Tripathi as the Governor of West Bengal
4. Shri Om Prakash Kohli as the Governor of Gujarat
5. Shri Padmanabha Balakrishna Acharya as the Governor of Nagaland

Rajya Sabha passes NID Bill

The government pushed through the ‘National Institute of Design Bill, 2013’ in the Rajya Sabha on the first day of the budget session of Parliament. The BJP-led NDA government, which is a minority in the Upper House, managed to pass the Bill with help from the Congress. The Bill originally drafted by the UPA government is not contentious and was introduced in the Rajya Sabha last year by former Commerce Minister Anand Sharma. Minister of State for Commerce & Industry Nirmala Sitharaman, who moved the Bill for consideration and passage, explained its provisions seeking to declare the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, as an institution of national importance. Currently, the NID is registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 and as an autonomous institution under the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950. Now, the NID can establish institute campuses anywhere within or outside India.