Current Affairs 21st August, 2015

Govt launches portal for students seeking education loans

The government on Thursday said it has a launched a website, vidyalakshmi.co.in, for students seeking educational loans and five banks including SBI, IDBI Bank and Bank of India have integrated their system with the portal.

The portal has been developed and maintained by NSDL e-Governance Infrastructure Limited (NSDL e-Gov) under the guidance of Department of Financial Services in the Finance Ministry, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA).

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech for 2015-16 had proposed to set up a fully IT based student financial aid authority to administer and monitor scholarships as well as educational loan schemes through Pradhan Mantri Vidya Lakshmi Karyakram (PMVLK).

It is aimed to ensure that no student misses out on higher education for lack of funds, said the release, adding that the launch of the portal is the first step towards achieving this objective.

The portal will provide information about educational loan schemes of banks; common educational loan application form for students; facility to apply to multiple banks for educational loans; and facility for banks to download students’ loan applications.

It also has facility for banks to upload loan processing status; facility for students to email grievances/queries relating to educational loans; dashboard facility for students to view status of their loan application and linkage to National Scholarship Portal for information and application for government scholarships.

Finance Ministry said so far 13 banks have registered 22 educational loan schemes on the Vidya Lakshmi Portal and five banks — SBI, IDBI Bank, Bank of India, Canara Bank and Union Bank of India have integrated their system with the portal for providing loan processing status to students.

Modi-Obama hotline becomes operational

The hotlines or secure lines of communication between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama and their national security advisers have recently become operational, though it has not been put to use during its short life span so far.

The decision regarding Obama-Modi hotline was made during Obamas's historic visit to New Delhi to attend Republic Day on January 26, as its chief guest.

With this India becomes only the fourth country- after Russia, Great Britain and China - with which the US has a hotline.

 

In a first, women register for vote in Saudi

Women are registering to vote in national elections for the first time in the history of Saudi Arabia.

In what the kingdom's officials describe as a "significant milestone in progress towards a participation-based society", municipal elections will be held across the country later this year. And in a remarkable move for a country where women's rights are severely limited, women have been allowed to both vote and stand for election themselves.

Bank holiday on second, fourth Saturdays

Bank employees have something to cheer on alternate weekends. The Centre on Thursday declared that the second and fourth Saturday of every month would be a holiday for banks, with effect from September 1, 2015.

This announcement is being made as part of the agreement arrived at during the 10 bipartite wage settlement between the IBA and bank employees’ unions in June this year.

Saina signs with ‘IOS’ for two years

Star India shuttler Saina Nehwal has signed a two-year deal with leading sports management group, IOS Sports & Entertainment.

IOS will now manage Saina’s endorsements, appearances, brand profiling, patents, licensing and digital rights, images and visibility on social networking sites.

The London Olympic bronze medallist had recently won a silver at the Badminton World Championship in Jakarta and today once again regained World No.1 spot.

IOS will target around Rs. 25 crores over the two years.

 

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Comments ( 1 )

  1. Asif Sk
    8 years ago
    Nice.