Current Affairs Question - 24 December 2019

Explanation :

• Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojna was launched in November 2015 to help loss-making discoms turn around financially, with support from their State governments.
• The scheme, optional for the states to join, envisaged state governments to take over 75 percent of the utilities debts and include it in their fiscal deficit calculations.
• It also requires distribution companies (discoms) to maintain commercial sustainability, and bring down the gap between average cost of supply (ACS) and average revenue realized (ARR) to zero.
• UDAY envisages to have a permanent solution for past as well as potential future issues of power sector such as reducing interest burden on discoms by allowing states to take over the bulk of their debt, reduce the cost of power, increase operational efficiencies of discoms by providing capital and infrastructure like coal linkages and reduce in AT&C and transmission losses.

Explanation :

• The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is an international treaty which was adopted and signed in 1982. The Convention came into effect in November, 1994.
• It replaced the four Geneva Conventions of April, 1958, which respectively concerned the territorial sea and the contiguous zone, the continental shelf, the high seas, fishing and conservation of living resources on the high seas.
• Also known as Law of the Sea, UNCLOS divides marine areas into five main zones namely- Internal Waters, Territorial Sea, Contiguous Zone, Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and the High Seas.
• The Convention has created three new institutions on the international scene :
• -International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, headquartered in Hamburg (Germany)
• -International Seabed Authority, headquartered in Kingston (Jamaica)
• -Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, based in the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
• It provides for full money rights to nations for a 200-mile zone by their shoreline.