RESIDEX is India’s first official Housing Price Index (HPI) that captures the price changes of residential housing.
It was launched by National Housing Bank in 2007 covering 26 cities.
It helps buyers and sellers to check and compare prices before entering a transaction.
They can also analyse the price trends across different cities both at composite level and product category level.
Components of RESIDEX include HPI @ market price and HPI @ Assessment Prices.
Recently, RESIDEX was revamped and the new RESIDEX has been expanded to 50 cities which includes smart cities and state capitals.
Base year for the new RESIDEX has been moved from 2007 to 2012-13.
Aaykar Setu
Central Board of Direct Taxes launched a new mobile app “Aaykar Setu”.
It enables taxpayers to perform basic functions through their smart phone.
Paying income tax, applying for PAN and seeking redressal of grievances have become easier through the use of this app.
The mobile app will also help people link their Aadhaar with PAN card as well as track the TDS deduction details.
It also facilitates direct communication between tax payers and officers and providing tax services.
Award for outstanding implementation of MGNREGA
Recently, West Bengal was awarded with a gold memento for its outstanding performance in convergence and livelihood augmentation in the implementation of MGNREGA.
In the district category, Nadia has received award for excellence in MGNREGA while Coochbehar district was awarded for its outstanding performance in implementation of Geo-MGNREGA.
UNESCO world heritage tag
Recently, Okinoshima, a tiny landmass of in Japan has been declared as a UNESCO World heritage site.
Women are banned here and the island is permanently manned by Shinto priests who pray to the island’s goddess as a part of their tradition.
Along with this, UNESCO’s heritage committee had considered 33 sites for its world heritage tag at its annual gathering in Poland.
Akbarabadi Mosque
Akbarabadi mosque was built by Aizaz-un-Nisa Begum in 1650 A.D.
Aizaz-un-Nisa was the wife of Shah Jahan, a Mughal Ruler and she had been given the title of ‘Akbarabadi Mahal’ after the place of her birth.
Shah Jahan built the Shalimar Garden in Delhi for Aizaz-un-Nisa.
Fatehpuri Mahal Begum was also a legally married wife of the emperor, who built the famous Fatehpuri Masjid in Delhi and also a mosque outside the Taj complex.
Malabar Exercise
It is a trilateral naval exercise among India, U.S and Japan.
It began in 1992 as a bilateral naval exercise between U.S and India. In 2015, it was expanded in to a trilateral exercise.
This year exercise is the 21st edition and currently under way in Chennai.
Malabar 2017 is one of the largest joint exercises to be held in the region and thrust would be on aircraft carrier operations, air defence, anti-submarine warfare (ASW) etc.
The Indian Navy will feature its aircraft carrier, INS Vikramaditya, guided missile destroyer Ranvir and its stealth frigates including Sindhugosh class submarines.
P-notes
Participatory notes (P-Notes) are offshore derivative instruments with Indian shares as underlying assets.
They are issued outside India to make investments in Indian stock market.
They are issued by brokers and FIIs registered with SEBI and any dividends or capital gains collected from the underlying securities go back to the investors.
It allows foreign high net worth individuals, hedge funds and other investors to put money in Indian markets without being registered with SEBI, thus providing them anonymity and ease of trading.
Indian regulators are against the participatory notes because lot of unaccounted money made its way to the country through the participatory note route.
