23-24 may
23 may
Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) appointed G Mohan Kumar as Defence Secretary
The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) on 22 May 2015 gave its nod for appointing G Mohan Kumar as the Secretary of the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
The decision was taken by the committee in a meeting chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Mohan Kumar will be in the office for a period of two years and succeeds Radha Krishna Mathur who completes his tenure on 28 May 2015.
Kumar, a 1979 batch IAS officer of Odisha cadre, is presently Secretary of the Department of Defence Production in the MoD.
Earlier, he worked as the Secretary in the Ministries of Steel and Commerce and Industry and Additional and Special Secretary in the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation among others.
J Jayalalithaa sworn-in as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for fifth time
AIADMK General Secretary J Jayalalithaa was on 23 May 2015 sworn-in as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for fifth time. Along with her, 28 others were sworn in as ministers in her Cabinet.
The oath was administered by Tamil Nadu Governor K Rosaiah at the Madras University Centenary Auditorium in Chennai.
She is the 18th Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and succeeded O Panneerselvam who resigned on 21 May 2015 following her acquittal on 11 May 2015 in the disproportionate assets case by the Karnataka High Court.
The court overruled the Bangalore’s special court judgment which found Jayalalithaa guilty. The verdict made her ineligible to occupy the post and subsequently, O Panneerselvam assumed the office on 29 September 2014.
Jayalalithaa had been the Chief Minister for four times during June 1991-May 1996, May-September 2001, March 2002-May 2006 and May 2011-September 2014 and will be in the office till the expiry of the fourteenth State Legislative Assembly in May 2016.
SAIL and ArcelorMittal signed MoU to set up Automotive Steel Plant in India
Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) and ArcelorMittal on 22 May 2015 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to set up an automotive steel manufacturing facility under a Joint Venture (JV) arrangement in India.
The MoU was signed in London by CS Verma, Chairman of SAIL and Lakshmi Mittal, Chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal in the presence of Rakesh Singh, Secretary to the Government of India, Ministry of Steel.
The JV will construct a state-of-the-art cold rolling mill and other downstream finishing facilities in India that will offer technologically advanced steel products to the country’s rapidly growing automotive sector.
To operationalise the MoU, a working group with representatives from both companies will be set up to evolve a structure for the proposed JV and carry out feasibility studies as part of a comprehensive due diligence process.
The proposed plant will help to meet growing demands of the Indian automotive sector which is poised to become the world’s fourth largest automobile manufacturing nation by 2020 with the production of approximately 7 million units per annum from the present 3.5 million units per annum.
The agreement is also in tune with the Union Government’s Make In India campaign which has been designed to transform India into a global manufacturing hub.
At present, while the ArcelorMittal is the world’s leading steel supplier to the global automotive sector with a market share of approximately 17 per cent, SAIL is India’s largest steel producer with 13.5 million metric tons production per annum.
Huawei launched LiteOS, world’s most lightweight IoT operating system (OS)
China-based Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd on 20 May 2015 launched LiteOS operating sytem meant for Internet of Things (IoT) based devices.
Huawei, a multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company, launched the technology at the Huawei Network Congress (HNC) 2015 held in Beijing, China.
Features of LiteOS
• It is the world’s most lightweight IoT OS with a size of 10KB.
• It supports zero configuration, auto-discovery and auto-networking.
• It can be widely applied to different areas including smart homes, wearables, connected vehicles and other industries.
• It helps to simplify the development of smart hardware to enhance IoT connectivity.
• It will be opened to all developers, which enables them to quickly develop their own IoT products.
The technology is part of the Agile Internet of Things (IoT) solution, which consists of three core components viz., Agile IoT gateway, Agile Controller and LiteOS, developed to augment the digitization of areas such as production, manufacturing and logistics.
About Internet of Things
IoT refers to a network of internet connected devices which are embedded with electronic sensors and data transmitting technologies. By using the Internet, the data collected by sensors in the IoT devices like cars, power systems and even as small as tooth brushes transmitted to other networked devices and data processing systems. Thus, the information generated by processing the data will be used by the companies and individuals to make better decisions.
As per an estimate, there will be roughly 100 billion IoT based devices in the world by 2025, with 2 million new sensors deployed every hour.
In India, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) released theDraft Internet of Things (IoT) policy in November 2014 to develop business opportunities in this emerging technology.
A Vellayan stepped aside as Chairman of Murugappa Group Corporate Board
A Vellayan was on 22 May 2015 stepped aside from the chairmanship of the Murugappa Group Corporate Board. He also relinquished the post of Chairman in the Coromandel International Ltd. and the EID Parry India Ltd.
Vellayan took this decision in the backdrop of an order issued on 21 May 2015 by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) linking him to trades by two individuals in shares of Sabero Organics Gujarat Ltd., a company that was acquired by Coromandel International Ltd. (subsidiary of Murugappa Group) in May 2011.
As per the SEBI, he passed on unpublished sensitive information related to the acquisition to the traders which amounted to insider trading practices prohibited under the SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 1992.