DROUPADI MURMU IS PRESIDENT!
KNOW your new president! The new president of India is Droupadi Murmu and she created some kind of history for being the first tribal president of India! Murmu, as she is called affectionately by her friends, is 64. She won by an overwhelming margin on Thursday, July 21, 2022 receiving over 64% votes in a day-long counting of ballot votes of MPs and MLAs. Reportedly the counting continued for more than 10 hours with returning officer, PC Mody. Murmu got 6,76,803 votes against Sinha’s meagre 3,80,177.
Droupadi Murmu succeeds Ram Nath Kovid as the country’s 15th president. There are other firsts too: She is the first president to be born post- Independence and the youngest to occupy the country’s top most post. Interestingly, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had nominated her for the July 18 Presidential election, she was on the shortlist for the same in 2017 as well. She is also the second woman president of India (Pratibha Patil being the first).
Murmu’s date of birth is 1958 in the Mayaurbhanj district of Odisha and she was educated in Bhubaneshwar; she started out working as a junior assistant in the State Irrigation & Power Department from 1979 to 1983, subsequently as a teacher at the Sri Aurobindo Integral Education Centre.
Needless to say all eyes are on the new president of India wondering how much she will do to improve the quality of life of the poor and marginalised, exploited and downtrodden tribals in India. For the time being the country is in celebration mode anew and Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has already sent in his congratulations to the new president!
VAN MAHOTSAV ALL AROUND
THE Raj Bhavan took the lead in marking Van Mahotsav with the Forest Department organising a function to plant trees at the Raj Bhavan lands on July 21, 2022 – the tree planting drive was led by Governor Sreedharan and First Lady Reetha Sreedharan who planted the first saplings. A reported 500 fruit bearing and medicinal saplings were planted on the estate this monsoon month of July.
SAY HELLO TO BANDICOOT ROBOTS!
IF you feel sorry for manual scavengers, feel sorry no more. They are being replaced by newly inducted manhole cleaning robots which will transform the sanitation chores of CCP workers. The robots will be managed by robot operators in association with Genrobotics using Bandicoot 2.0 – reportedly, the world’s first manhole cleaning robots!
The robots were introduced to media people and interested visitors with Minister of PWD Nilesh Cabral handing over the key to Panaji’s Mayor Rohit Monserrate in the presence of CCP Commissioner Agnelo A J Fernandes, City Engg PWD Santosh Mhapane, Deputy Mayor Panaji Sanjiv Naik and Municipal Egg Vivek Parsekar – at the Town Hall in Panaji on July 18, 2022.
The bandicoot robots have been developed by a MakeInIndia and Swachh Bharat initiative by national award-winning start-up company Genrobotics. Now let’s see how the robots perform for the proof will always be in the eating of the pudding or so to speak. Be sure to say hello to your friendly bandicoot robot if you one trundling around town and may smart city Panaji’s sanitations improve considerably courtesy the so called bandicoot robotic machines! We hear that these bandicoot robots will also be commissioned at tourism places too and this will improve Goa’s tourism industry and image.
NOT EASY TO BE FM!
MAKING the rounds on social media this bit of interpretation of the country’s successful GST story! Or how to kill the golden goose – GST everything, the more the merrier for the government wants to change the face of the government and …country? More and more ache din for the raj sarkar, that sounds closer to the truth! Take a look at this new GST additions someone put out on Twitter: