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The high-powered selection committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appointed Karnataka DGP Praveen Sood as Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for a period of two years. He will take charge from Subodh Kumar Jaiswal, who completes his tenure on May 25.
Sood’s appointment was announced in an order issued by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions on Sunday, a day after the Congress emerged the winner in the Karnataka Assembly elections.
A 1986-batch IPS officer of the state cadre, Sood was appointed Karnataka DGP in January 2020, superseding Ashit Mohan Prasad, who was from the previous batch.
Incidentally, in March this year, in the run-up to the Assembly elections, Sood came under fire from the state Congress, which accused the DGP of bias towards the BJP.
Targeting Sood, Karnataka Congress chief D K Shivakumar had accused the police of filing cases against his party workers while turning a blind eye towards the BJP. He said that if the Congress formed the next government, it would take action against Sood.
This DGP (Sood) is a ‘nalayak’. Let our government come. We will take action against him. The Congress has also written to the ECI to remove him. I thought he was a respected man. Immediately, a case should be registered against him and he should be arrested.
As Govt pushes ONDC as e-com’s UPI equivalent, the industry not sure (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
A mixed messaging by the Centre directing e-commerce companies and food delivery players to join its digital commerce network has left the industry perplexed.
Some players like Flipkart and Zomato are trying to set up step down subsidiaries to join the government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), but some other big ones such as Amazon and Swiggy have chosen to stay away so far.
The looming question, and one which both the government and the industry do not necessarily share the same views, is whether ONDC can be a success without the participation of the very entities whose hold over the e-commerce market it is vying to challenge.
And, industry players, who do not wish to come on record, say there is a concerted attempt to onboard all competitions that ONDC set out to beat in the first place.
Backers of ONDC, registered as a Section 8 not-for-profit company with many financial institutions as stakeholders, have hailed the move as the ‘UPI-moment’ of e-commerce, but some analysts and industry executives have raised doubts if the government-backed entity can match efficiencies of a streamlined e-commerce operation with a service interface that has multiple moving parts – from order to delivering goods, and from handling returns to grievances.
The City
Gateway to the past: Khooni Darwaza is a key witness to the Revolt of 1857 (Page no. 4)
(GS Paper 1, History)
From witnessing the events of the 1857 Revolt, sharing a neighbourhood with the Maulana Azad Medical College to bearing the history of executions, the Khooni Darwaza is a key piece of the country’s history.
Situated near the Delhi Gate, Khooni Darwaza is a gate built during the reign of Sher Shah Suri in the 16th century.
The gate gets its name from the killings that took place there during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
The architecture of Khooni Darwaza is a blend of Mughal and Afghan styles. The gate is made of quartzite stone and is three-storeyed. It has three arched entrances, with the central one being the largest.
The upper stories of the gate have balconies with jharokhas that provide a view of the surrounding area.
It is around 50 feet in height and has different levels, which can be accessed by three different staircases. The gate has a large courtyard in front, which historians believed was used as a public gathering space in the past.
The courtyard is surrounded by a high wall, and there are several chambers and rooms inside the gate.
Explained
Storm Shadow missiles (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The United Kingdom will provide long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine, which it has been requesting in a bid to push back invading Russian forces, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told Parliament.
The weaponry is the latest addition to the long list of military aid given to Kyiv by its Western allies. Ukraine has so far received a wide variety of weapons and ammunition, including anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft systems and artillery, since Russia invaded it in February 2022.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, his military officers and other experts believe that the Storm Shadow missiles, each costing around £2 million, will give Ukrainian forces the ability to strike Russian military targets located well behind the front lines — especially in Crimea, which Moscow illegally occupied in 2014.
The use of Storm Shadow will allow Ukraine to push back Russian forces based within Ukrainian sovereign territory.
Storm Shadow is a long-ranged, air-launched, conventionally armed, deep-strike missile, which is manufactured by the France-based MBDA Missile Systems.
It was first produced after the “UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) placed a €1.13bn contract with MBDA Systems for the development and production of the Storm Shadow long-range missile in 1997.