Karnataka

1. Mahadayi tribunal verdict favours Karnataka

• The Mahadayi River Water Tribunal on Tuesday allowed Karnataka to divert an additional 5.5 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) of water to the Malaprabha basin during the monsoon, ending the 50-year dispute with Goa.
• Karnataka and Goa, the riparian states of the Mahadayi — known as the Mandovi river in Goa — had been locked in a bitter battle over sharing the waters of the river, which originates in Karnataka's Belgaum district, for some 50 years. Since 2001, Karnataka has been asking Goa to release 7.6 TMC of the river water to meet the drinking and irrigation needs of its people in four drought-prone districts.
• Although the river flow runs along a 29-kilometre stretch in Karnataka and 52 kilometres in Goa, its catchment area — the area from where water drains into the river — is spread over 2,032 kilometres in the southern state as against 1,580 kilometres in Goa.

General

1. Army officers moves SC against civilian authorities

• Over 300 Army officers on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court against what they called “persecution” by the court and civilian agencies, like the CBI, for doing their duty in the insurgency-hit areas of Jammu and Kashmir and the northeastern States.
• The petition, filed by senior officers at the level of Commanders, comes shortly after the court directed a CBI SIT to file chargesheets, in a time-bound manner, against Army officers involved in the Manipur extra-judicial killings, in which innocents were allegedly killed after being branded as insurgents. The court is monitoring the CBI probe and cases number up to over 1,500.

2. Rupee fall

• The sharp depreciation of the rupee against major currencies will help inbound tourism to grow while outbound travel will be hit.

3. New bidding model for greenfield airports

• A new transaction structure for the bid process for greenfield airports, switching from a revenue share model to a fixed fee per passenger to be paid to the concessioning authority.
• The proposed change to the bid parameters would help ensure affordability of airport services for passengers as well as predictability of revenue for the winning bidder.
• The present model is revenue sharing

4. Army’s reform under way

• First phase of the reforms involved redeployment and restructuring of approximately 57,000 posts of officers, JCOs, ORs and civilians.
• The major reforms include optimisation of signals establishments, restructuring of repair echelons, redeployment of ordnance echelons, better utilisation of supply and transport echelons and animal transport units besides closure of military Farms and Army postal establishments in peace locations.