Current Affairs | National | International | SSC | UPSC 27th April 2025

 

National News 

1. Six years on, Kailash Mansarovar Yatra to restart by end of June 

•  Six years after the pilgrimage was last flagged off, the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra will restart with about 750 pilgrims travelling to Tibet between June and August, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced on Saturday. 
•  The first batch of pilgrims is expected to travel out of Delhi on June 30, indicating a few weeks’ delay compared with the previous years when they would start in early June. 
•  Started in 1981 The pilgrimage, which originally began in 1981 under a bilateral agreement, was suspended by the Chinese government due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and was not resumed due to the Galwan killings and tensions on the Line of Actual Control since then. 
•  While an agreement on disengagement between Indian and Chinese troops was completed in October 2024, talks on de-escalation and demobilisation of troops are ongoing. 
•  Negotiating logistics The resumption of the Mansarovar Yatra is one of the first such measures signalling the restoration of ties between the two countries. 
•  Other measures, including restoration of direct flights, resumption of visas in all categories, and exchanges of media and think tank experts, are also being discussed by Delhi and Beijing. 
• There are also discussions on a number of events to mark 75 years of ties between India and China. After talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kazan last year, the two sides agreed to restore normal bilateral ties. 
•  The restart of the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage was discussed at many high-level meetings, and agreed upon during a visit to Beijing by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri in January this year. 

International News 

2. India raises continental-shelf claim in Arabian Sea region 

•  India has increased its claim in the central Arabian Sea, as part of its “extended continental shelf” by nearly 10,000 square km and also modified an earlier claim to avoid a long-standing dispute with Pakistan over the maritime boundary between the two countries, suggest documents submitted earlier this month with the United Nations. 
•  Coastal countries have an exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which gives exclusive mining and fishing rights, up to 200 nautical miles from their coastlines. 
•  In addition to this, such States can make claims for more area in the ocean provided they can scientifically establish to a UN body, called the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), that this claimed area extends unbroken from their landmass all the way to the seabed. 
•  All of this oceanic area is considered part of a country’s extended continental shelf. This gives them rights to commercially mine for valuable minerals, polymetallic nodules and oil reserves. 
•  India already has 12 nautical miles of territorial sea and 200 nautical miles of the EEZ measured from the baselines. “With the anticipated addition of approximately 1.2 million square km of extended continental shelf from the two submissions to the 2 million sq. km of EEZ, India’s seabed and sub-seabed area would become almost equal to its land area of 3.274 million sq. km,” according to the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR), Goa. India made its first claim in 2009 in vast stretches of sea spanning the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. 
• Due to geology, the continental shelf of a country can frequently overlap with another, and the process of scrutinising and deciding upon the claims of countries can run into years. 
•  While India’s claims are still being weighed upon, Pakistan in 2021 objected to portions of India’s claimed territory in the western oshore regions on the grounds that nearly 100 nautical miles overlapped with a maritime border that was under “dispute”. Specifically, this referred to a dispute between the countries over the Sir Creek, a strip of water in the marshes of the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat. 
•  The creek roughly separates the Kutch region in India and Pakistan’s Sindh province. While India countered these objections, the net result was that the CLCS, in March 2023, rejected the entirety of India’s claim in the Arabian Sea region. 
• However, the commission gives leeway to countries to submit “modied claims”. It’s in response to this that on April 3, India split its original claim (in the western Arabian Sea) into two “partial ones”. Doing so, said and social in the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), is to ensure that India’s claim in the central Arabian Sea region is not affected. 
•  “Countries can submit any number of partial claims. Overall we have increased our claim by an additional 10,000 sq. km based on additional data gathered,” M. Ravichandran, Secretary, MoES, told The Hindu. “The remaining part can be discussed bilaterally. 
•  This strategy is part of our approach to ensure that at least (the region) without dispute, and which is very valuable, is awarded to us.” Institutions of the MoES, such as the NCPOR, have played a key role in the technical aspects of determining India’s continental shelf. 
• Some parts of India’s continental shelf claims in the Arabian Sea overlap with that of Oman. However, the two countries have an agreement in place since 2010 that while the continental shelf between them is yet to be delimited, it is ‘not under dispute’. 
•  India has claimed about 300,000 square km in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, though these have faced contests by Myanmar and Sri Lanka. 

State News 

3.Meghalaya to host Strawberry Festival on May 2 and 3 

•  The State of Meghalaya will host a two-day Strawberry festival on May 2 and 3, aimed at promoting agro-tourism and rural livelihoods through a range of cultural and recreational activities. 
•  The festival will take place simultaneously across three locations — Syntung in East Khasi Hills, Sohliya in Ri-Bhoi district, and Darechigre in West Garo Hills — areas where strawberry cultivation has seen significant growth in recent years. 
•  “Visitors will be provided with the opportunity to pick fresh strawberries straight from the fields and an immersive experience to connect with the rural way of life,” an official said. Appointment News 

4.PM virtually distributes over 51,000 appointment letters in Rozgar Mela

•  Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday virtually distributed more than 51,000 appointment letters to new recruits in various Central government departments, as part of the ongoing Rozgar Mela initiative. 
•  Addressing the recruits, Mr. Modi said the government was undertaking sustained efforts to expand opportunities for both employment and self-employment across sectors. He cited India’s strong economic outlook, as projected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has affirmed that the country will remain the fastest growing major economy. 
• Highlighting sectoral growth, the Prime Minister said that both the automobile and footwear industries had achieved record levels of production and export, contributing significantly to job creation. 
•  In the infrastructure sector, he noted a surge in cargo movement via inland waterways — from 18 million tonnes in 2014 to 145 million tonnes currently. The number of operational national waterways, he said, has increased from five to 110, with their total length more than doubling from 2,700 km to over 5,000 km. 
• Describing the growth as inclusive, Mr. Modi emphasised the rising participation of women in various fields. He noted that three of the top five candidates in this year’s UPSC Civil Services Examination were women, and over 90 lakh self-help groups now comprise more than 10 crore women working across the country. 
•  He also praised the contribution of India’s youth to the nation’s technological progress, particularly in areas such as data, digital innovation, and real time digital transactions. “When the youth actively contribute to nation-building, the country experiences accelerated development and earns global recognition,” he said. 

Miscellaneous News 

5. NCERT compresses three subjects into one book for Class 7

•  The new social science textbook for Class 7 published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has shrunk what were earlier three separate books for history, geography, and social and political life. 
•  Students in Classes 4 and 7 are getting new textbooks for the academic year 2025-26. Class 7 students will get a single social science text, titled Exploring Society - India and Beyond (Part 1). 
•  The new book replaces three earlier books: Our Pasts - II for History, Social and Political Life (a new subject, earlier introduced in middle school, which replaces civics), and Our Environment for Geography. 
•  A senior official involved with formulation of new textbooks told The Hindu the NCERT was likely to release the second part of the book, titled Exploring Society - India and Beyond (Part 2), for Class 7 in upcoming months. “Part 1 only covers six months’ worth of social science study for Class 7, and Part 2 is being envisioned for the next six months.” 
•  The new book is structured around five themes: “India and the world: land and the people”; “Tapestry of the past”; “Our cultural heritage and knowledge traditions”; “Governance and democracy”; and “Economic life around us”. Part 1 timeline While the previous Class 7 history textbook started its account at the 7th century AD, Part 1 of the new textbook covers the earlier period from 1900 BCE to 300 BCE and culminates with the period between the 6th and 9th century AD. 
•  The text also features many Sanskrit terms along with diacritics, the marks used over letters to encourage the correct pronunciation of Sanskrit words. While the old textbook mentions Persian chronicler Minhaj-I-Siraaj, Mughal Emperor Babur, and the 14th century poet who used the terms “Hindustan” and “Hind”, the new textbook mentions the origins of Bharat, and India. Some of these changes follow from the revisions made to Class 6 textbooks last year.
•   The old Class 6 history textbook had covered the kingdoms of ancient India in detail, but this content was left out of the new Class 6 textbook and has now been included in the Class 7 text instead. 
•  The new Class 7 textbook’s history content deals in detail with ancient India and ends with the fall of the Gupta Empire between the 5th and 6th century AD. 
• The old Class 7 textbook only had one chapter dedicated to select Indian dynasties, between the 7th and 12th century AD and did not have as much in-depth content on the Mauryan, Gupta and other regional Indian empires as the new text does. 
•  No sultans, Mughals The older Class 7 textbook also covered the rise of the Delhi Sultanate between the 12th and 15th centuries, as the Rajput dynasty gave way to the onslaught of early Turkish rulers, the Khiljis, Tughlaqs, Sayyids, and Lodis, and later in the 16th century, to the Mughals. Because Part 1 of the new textbook ends at the Gupta Empire, students will not be introduced to the rise of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals at least in the first half of Class 7.
•   It remains to be seen whether these chapters of the consequent historical timeline will be included in Part 2 of the new Class 7 textbook. Ancient kingdoms The new consolidated book’s second theme on the “Tapestry of the past” has four chapters dedicated to history. 
•  The fourth chapter, “New beginnings: cities and states”, begins with a quote from Kautilya’s Arthashastra and a picture of the Rajgir ruins from the Magadha empire. 
•  It introduces the concept of the Janapadas and Mahajanapadas, including Gandhara, Kuru, Matsya, Avanti, Chedi, Kosala, Magadha and so on, dating back to the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. 
•  There is also a mention of the Varna-Jati system that emerged from Vedic texts. The fifth chapter, “The rise of empires”, mentions Pataliputra, the rise of Magadha, the Mauryas, the Greek Invasion, and the reign of Ashoka.