I&B Minister Writes to Ministries to Come On Social Media Platforms through the Already Established Communication Hub

Minister for Information & Broadcasting Shri Prakash Javadekar has requested all Central Ministries to disseminate their policy initiatives through the Communication Hub under the existing New Media Wing of the Ministry of I&B. Firmly believing in prolific use of social media, the I&B Minister wrote to his Cabinet colleagues for utilising this Communication Hub as a one-stop place for social media outreach based on Hub and Spoke model. 

In his letter, he mentioned that each Ministry/department may liaise with the New Media Wing which will cater to all its needs i.e. disseminating information through packaging and placing of content, wider reach through variety of tools and response management. He further wrote that the two-way interaction envisaged in this endeavor would provide a 360 degree communication approach to the government and hence help in last man connectivity. 

This is in adherence to the vision of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi who desires to use the social media platforms extensively for transparency and better governance. 

PM's tweets on school curriculum

Following is the text of the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi's tweets today, on school curriculum: 

"Am reading in the news that some states want to include Narendra Modi's life struggles as a part of school curriculum. 

I firmly believe that the life story of living individuals should not be included as a part of the school curriculum. 

India has a rich history of several stalwarts who made India what it is today. Young minds should read about these greats & emulate them." 

Governors and Ministers call on PM

Governors from four States today called on the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi at South Block. These were courtesy calls, and they conveyed their best wishes to the Prime Minister. 

Governors who met the PM include S/s Jagannath Pahadia (Haryana), ESL Narasimhan (Andhra Pradesh), N.N. Vohra (Jammu & Kashmir) and V.K. Duggal (Manipur). 

Besides the Governors, Union Ministers who met PM and conveyed their best wishes were S/s Nitin Gadkari, Gopinath Munde, Piyush Goyal, Narendra Singh Tomar and Dharmendra Pradhan.

Prime Minister vacates Vadodara Parliamentary seat and retains Varanasi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today vacated the Vadodara Parliamentary seat, retaining the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat. Shri Narendra Modi sent in his resignation as a Member of Parliament from Vadodara to Speaker of Lok Sabha today. 

Shri Narendra Modi was elected from both the Varanasi and Vadodara parliamentary constituencies in the recent Lok Sabha elections. 

Bye-elections to the Council of States from various States

 There are 9 casual vacancies in the Council of States from various States.  

	Name of State	Name of Member	Cause of Vacancy	Remaining Term up to
1	Jharkhand	Dr. Kanwar Deep Singh	Resigned on 19.02.2014	07.07.2016
2	Uttar Pradesh	Prof. S. P. Singh Baghel	Resigned on 09.03.2014	04.07.2016
3	Odisha	Sri Anang Uday Singh Deo	Elected as MLA on 17.04.2014	02.04.2020
4	Andhra Pradesh	Dr. N. Janardhana Reddy	Due to death on 09.05.2014	21.06.2016
5	Bihar	Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy	Elected to Lok Sabha on  16.05.2014	07.07.2016
6		Shri Ram Kripal Yadav	Do	07.07.2016
7		Shri Ram Vilas Paswan	Do	07.07.2016
8	Madhya Pradesh	Shri Faggan Singh Kulaste	Do	02.04.2018
9	Maharashtra	Shri Tariq Anwar	Do	04.07.2016

Over 55,000 Lives Saved Last Year In Disaster Management Efforts NDRF Gets Two More Battalions

Secretary (Border Management) in the Ministry of Home Affairs Ms Sneh Lata Kumar inaugurated the Annual Conference of Relief Commissioners/ Secretaries, Department of Disaster Management of States/UTs to review the status of preparedness of dealing with crisis situation resulting from the South West Monsoon-2014, here today. Speaking on the occasion Smt. Kumar said the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has been raised from 10 to 12 battalions. She said more than 55,000 lives were saved in the wake of Uttarakhand cloudburst and Cyclone Phailin that struck Odisha coast last year as a result of better preparedness and prompt rescue and relief efforts in disaster mitigation. 

In his address Shri SN Mohanty, Secretary, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said due to advances in weather forecasting priorities have changed from post-disaster relief centric to avoiding a calamity. He pointed out six states were yet to formulate State Disaster Management Plans while the rest 22 have put such mechanism in place. Presiding over the inaugural session, Shri GVV Sarma, Joint Secretary (Disaster Management) lauded the minimal loss to human lives during cyclone Phailin due to better and precise weather forecasting and close coordination among various disaster response agencies. 

The Annual Conference was organized at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi to discuss Disaster Management issues ahead of the setting on of the monsoon this year. 

Representatives of different Ministries/Departments/Organizations including the NDMA, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Central Water Commission (CWC), India Meteorological Department (IMD), NDRF, Geological Survey of India (GSI) and Ministry of Defence took part in the daylong deliberations

Number of Contestants and Winners - Gender-Wise Highest number of Women in Lok Sabha so far

The 16^th Lok Sabha has the highest number of women members ever at 61, compared to 59 Women members in 2009.The least number of women members was in 1977 followed by 1971 and 1957.  In the 2014 Elections, 8251 candidates contested the elections, out of which 668 were women and 7,578 were men. 5 Transgenders also contested the polls this Elections. The winning percentage of women in the 16^th General Elections is 9.13% while that of Men’s is 6.36%.The Average number of contestants per seat is 15.2 in 2014.

Contestants and Winners - Gender-wise

General Elections	Year	Total Number of Seats	Total Number of Contestants	Average Number of Contestants Per Seat	Male			Female
					Contestants	Elected	Winning %	Contestants	Elected	Winning %
First	1952	489	1,874	4.67	--	--	--	--	--	--
Second	1957	494	1,519	3.77	1474	472	32.02	45	22	48.89
Third	1962	494	1,985	4.02	1919	463	24.13	66	31	46.97
Fourth	1967	520	2,369	4.56	2302	491	21.33	67	29	43.28
Fifth	1971	518	2,784	5.37	2698	497	18.42	86	21	24.42
Sixth	1977	542	2,439	4.5	2369	523	22.08	70	19	27.14
Seventh	1980	542	4,629	8.54	4486	514	11.46	143	28	19.58
Eighth	1984-85	542	5,492	10.13	5321	500	9.4	171	43	25.15
Ninth	1989	543	6,160	11.34	5962	514	8.62	198	29	14.65
Tenth	1991-92	543	8,749	16.11	8419	496	5.89	330	38	11.52
Eleventh	1996	543	13,952	25.69	13353	503	3.77	599	40	6.68
Twelfth	1998	543	4,750	8.75	4476	500	11.17	274	43	15.69
Thirteenth	1999	543	4,648	8.56	4364	494	11.32	284	49	17.25
Fourteenth	2004	543	5,435	10.01	5080	498	9.8	355	45	12.68
Fifteenth	2009	543	8,070	14.86	7514	484	6.44	556	59	10.61
Sixteenth	2014	543	8,251*	15.2	7,578	482	6.36	668	61	9.13