Category: State Current Affairs

State to ready 300-acre data centre park at Tavarekere in 18 months

News –

• Karnataka will create a dedicated data centre park at Tavarekere, an industrial area bordering Hoskote and Kolar.

Dedicated data centre park at Tavarekere

• Aim – to cater to the huge data centre infrastructure requirement in the State.
• Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) has already notified and would soon be acquiring 1,000 acres of land in Tavarekere, (some 46 km away from the central business area of Bengaluru),

Mining project in Tumakuru district

News –

• The regional office of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), Bengaluru, has rejected a proposal for diversion of 48.2 ha of forestland for a mining project in Tumakuru district.
• The inspection pertained to a proposal seeking clearance for the Sarangapani Iron and Manganese Ore Mine Project.
• The mining project is in Thirtharamapura Reserve Forest and is spread across Gollarahalli, Hosahalli, Kodihalli, Tonalapura, and Lakmenahalli villages in Chikkanayakanahalli taluk of Tumakuru district.
• The rejection stems from the fact that commercial mining is a prohibited activity within the deemed Eco-Sensitive Zone of Bukkapatna Wildlife Sanctuary.

Additional Information – Bukkapatna Chinkara Wildlife Sanctuary

• Location – It is located in the Sira Taluk of the Tumakuru district in Karnataka.
• It is a protected area, notified in 2019,
• Objective – to conserve the Indian gazelle (Chinkara) and other dryland biodiversity.

Flora and Fauna

• The sanctuary is a wooded savannah ecosystem, featuring extensive grasslands and sparsely distributed native tree species.
• Key Fauna: The sanctuary is primarily known for its chinkaras, and also features blackbucks, four-horned antelopes, leopards, sloth bears, hyenas, and wild boars. More than 160 bird species have also been recorded.
• Key Flora: Notable tree species include Hardwickia binata (Anjan), Phyllanthus emblica (Amla), and Tamarindus indica (Imli).

Bengaluru to get 35-petaflop supercomputer from C-DAC

News –

• Bengaluru will soon get a 35-petaflop supercomputer, a high-capacity computing machine, currently being built by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).
• A petaflop is a unit of measurement for computer processing speed, representing one quadrillion floating-point operations per second.

National Supercomputing Mission(NSM)

• Launched in – 2015
• Objective – It is a mission of the Government of India to boost the supercomputing capabilities of India.

Key features

• This mission consists of designing and manufacturing 73 supercomputers in India.
• These clusters of supercomputers will be connected to various academic and research institutions across India.
• This grid will be connected to the National Knowledge Network (NKN).

Implementing Agencies

1. Department of Science and Technology
2. Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY)
3. Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)
4. Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.

New-age applications of supercomputers

• Weather forecasting
• Natural disaster predictions
• Drug discovery
• Space applications
• Aerodynamic research
• 3D nuclear test simulations.

Facts about Supercomputers

• India’ s First Supercomputer – PARAM 8000, developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, and launched in 1991.
• “Rudra” is India’s first indigenously designed HPC server on par with global HPC-class servers.
• India’s fastest supercomputer is- AIRAWAT, which is the largest and fastest AI supercomputing system in the country.
• It has a speed of 13,170 teraflops and was ranked 75th globally on the Top 500 list in 2023.

Exports: ‘Karnataka is first in services’

News –

• Even though Karnataka tops the country’s chart in export of services, the State occupies the fourth position in export of merchandise.
• Karnataka, by exporting $158 billion of services out of India’s total services export of $387 billion during 2024-25, accounted for 41% of the country’s services exports.

Key findings –

• Karnataka is top exporter in services followed by Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and Gujarat, .
• However, Karnataka trailed Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu to occupy the fourth position when it came to the export of merchandise.

NIMHANS to host Mental Health Santhe 4.0

News –

• NIMHANS will host the fourth edition of its flagship public awareness initiative, Mental Health Santhe 4.0.

Mental Health Santhe 4.0

• Objective : It will bring together mental health organisations, professionals, caregivers, and the public in a collective effort to promote mental well-being and suicide prevention.
• Organised by – Department of Mental Health Education in collaboration with several departments of NIMHANS.
• The event is supported under the Swachhta Action Plan 2025–26 of the Kayakalp Scheme by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
• Theme : ‘Community Supporting Mental Wellbeing Together’, coincides with the global observance of World Mental Health Day 2025 (October 10th).

Karnataka Sahitya Academy awards

News-

• The Karnataka Sahitya Academy honorary awards for 2024

Awardees –

1. Shudra Srinivas,
2. Pratibha Nandakumar,
3. M. Basavanna,
4. D.B. Nayak and
5. Vishvanath Karnad

‘Sahitya Shri’ award  – 10 writers are being given the ‘Sahitya Shri’ award

• Y. Naranaswamy,
• M. Puttaiah,
• Padmalaya Nagaraj,
• U. Suma,
• Mamata Sagara,
• Sabita Bannadi,
• Abdul Hai Toranagal,
• Gurulingappa Dabale,
• S. Anupama and
• Amaresha Yatagal.

Karnataka Sahitya Academy Awards,

• Instituted in – 1983
• They are among the most prestigious literary honors in Kannada.
• Field – Awards are given for poetry, fiction, criticism, travel writing, translation, children’s literature, and more.
• Purpose – It is a prestigious annual literary award given by the Government of Karnataka to recognize and promote exceptional contributions to Kannada literature.

The awards are presented in several categories:

• Annual Honorary Awards: Five distinguished literary figures are honored each year for their immense overall service to Kannada literature.
• Book Prizes: Awards are given to the best books in approximately 18 different literary genres, including poetry, novel, short fiction, play, criticism, travel writing, translation, children’s literature, and science writing.
• “Sahityashree” Awards: This award is also presented to several writers annually for their notable literary contributions.

‘Indira food kit’

News –

• ‘Indira food kit’ to replace 5 kg rice under Anna Bhagya scheme
• It will benefit about 4.48 crore population holding below poverty line cards and will include toor dal, oil, sugar and salt

‘Indira food kit’

• Objective – The scheme aims to ensure better nutrition, transparency, and effective resource utilization.
• Food covered : The Indira Food Kit contains nutritious items: toor dal, moong dal, sugar, salt, and cooking oil,
• Distribution – It is based on family size half a kg for 1-2 member families, 1 kg for 3-4 members, and 1.5 kg for families of 5 or more.
• Beneficiaries :The scheme covers about 26 crore ration cardholder families, impacting around 4.48 crore beneficiaries.
• Benefits : The change is intended to reduce misuse, smuggling, and illegal diversion of rice under the previous scheme.
• The government expects to save approximately Rs 300 crore annually by implementing the kit instead of rice.
• The kit is distributed via fair price shops using BPL ration cards under the Public Distribution System.

Dr. Kalayya Krishnamurthy National Award 2024

News-

• Horticultural scientist G. Karunakaran, who is credited with popularising dragon fruit cultivation and identifying the Siddu jackfruit variety, was conferred the Dr. Kalayya Krishnamurthy National Award 2024 by the University of Agricultural Sciences -Bengaluru (UAS-B)

State to appoint three Information Commissioners soon

News –

• The State government has reportedly finalised the names of three candidates for filling vacancies in the Karnataka Information Commission.

1. Former IAS officer Richard Vincent D’Souza,
2. Journalist Venkat Singh, and
3. Former journalist Mahesh Valvekar.

Karnataka information commission

• Established under – It is an autonomous statutory body established under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.
• It comprises one State Chief Information Commissioner (SCIC) and up to 10 State Information Commissioners (SIC) who are appointed by the Governor.
• Objective – to hear appeals and complaints regarding information requested from various government entities in Karnataka.

Powers and Functions

• The KIC’s powers include receiving and investigating complaints about denied RTI requests, ordering public authorities to provide information, and exercising powers similar to a civil court.
• The commission can also recommend disciplinary action against Public Information Officers who obstruct access to information

Almatti dam

News

• notifies land acquisition to raise Almatti dam height
• A total of 1,33,867 acres will be acquired for increasing the height of the dam from 519.60 metres to 524.25 metres.

Almatti dam

• It also known as Lal Bahadur Shastri Dam,
• Location – It is a major hydroelectric and irrigation project located on the Krishna River in the Vijayapura district of Karnataka.
• It was completed in July 2005 and serves multiple purposes including irrigation, hydroelectric power generation, and flood control.
• The dam stands 52.5 meters high and stretches about 3.5 kilometers in length.
• The reservoir has a gross storage capacity of 123.08 TMC (Thousand Million Cubic feet) at 519 meters above mean sea level.
• Almatti Dam is the main reservoir of the Upper Krishna Irrigation Project.
• It houses a 290 MW hydroelectric power station with vertical Kaplan turbines; five 55 MW generators and one 15 MW generator.

Additional Information – Important Dams of Karnataka