The Daily Brief – 13th September 2019

Additional Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Dr. Pramod Kumar Mishra has been appointed as the Principal Secretary to Mr. Modi with effect from 11^th September, 2019. He has served as the Chairman of State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC) and in the area of Disaster management. He was also conferred with the United Nations SASAKAWA Award 2019.

State Government of Punjab signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) under the Department of Commerce, Union Ministry of Commerce & Industry to become the first state in the country to set up a GeM Organizational Transformation Team (GOTT) Project Management Unit (PMU) in the state. It is aimed at effectively utilising this transformational initiative towards inclusive, efficient and transparent procurement.

Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Sanjay Dhotre launched the Curriculum for Life Skills or Jeevan Kaushal designed by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in New Delhi. It encourages development of life skills in every individual as an essential part of wholesome learning.

Union Minister for Communications, Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad announced that the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) has rolled out Aadhaar Enabled Payment System Services (AePS). With this, the IPPB has now become the single largest platform in India for providing inter-operable banking services to customers. Founded on 1^st September, 2018, IPPB is a 100% government owned payments bank.

South Asia’s first cross-border petroleum products pipeline from Motihari, Bihar in India to Amlekhgunj in Nepal was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Nepal counterpart KP Sharma Oli through a video conference. It is a 69-kilometre pipeline with a capacity of 2 million metric tons (MMT) per annum. The Motihari-Amlekhgunj oil pipeline project was first proposed in 1996.

Narendra Modi with Ralph Everard Gonsalves

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and Grenadines Dr. Ralph Everard Gonsalves, who is on a first-ever visit of Prime Minister of St. Vincent and Grenadines to India, in New Delhi. He is also participating in the high-level United Nations Convention on Combating Desertification (UNCCD). Both of them agreed to enhance cooperation between two nations in the areas of skill development, education, training, culture, disaster management and finance.

Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Aswini Kumar Choubey announced that the government is going to set up a National Genomic Grid, so as to take cancer research to the next level and make treatment viable for people of different economic classes. This National Genomic Grid will study the genomic data of cancer patients from India.