DAILY GK 15-16 JUNE 2026
1. CHIEF
OF THE ARMY STAFF
·
The Government of India (GoI) appointed Lieutenant
General (Lt Gen) Dhiraj Seth, presently
serving as the Vice Chief of the Army Staff (VCOAS), as the next Chief
of the Army Staff (COAS), under the Ministry of Defence (MoD) with
effective from June 30, 2026.
·
He will
succeed General Upendra Dwivedi following his
retirement on June 30, 2026.
2. NSC CHAIRPERSON
·
The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC)
approved the appointment of Saibal Chattopadhyay, former
director of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta, as chairperson of the National Statistical
Commission (NSC), under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).
·
Shubhabrata Das, Satyendra
Bahadur Singh, and Madhavan
Mukund have been appointed as part-time members
·
The
Government of India (GoI) established the NSC through a
resolution dated 1 June 2005, and it
came into effect on 12 July 2006 based on the
recommendations of the Rangarajan
Commission (2001).
·
The commission is structured with a part-time Chairperson, four part-time
technical members, one permanent
ex-officio member, and a Secretary.
·
The NSC formulates
policies and standards for India’s statistical system, promotes quality,
transparency and public trust in official statistics.
3. UN’S
ITLOS TRIBUNAL JUDGE
·
Indian jurist Bimal N. Patel has
been elected as a judge of the International
Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) for the 2026-2035 term.
·
Bimal N. Patel was elected during the 36th Meeting of States Parties to the
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), held at the UN
Headquarters in New York.
·
Among 172
signatories of UNCLOS, 7 new
judges, representing India, Vietnam, Ghana, Tunisia, Russia, Brazil and the
Netherlands, were elected for 2026-2035 term.
4. 13TH
BRICS URBANISATION FORUM
·
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA)
concluded the 13th BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Urbanisation
Forum, held in New Delhiunder India’s BRICS Chairship 2026.
·
The
Forum adopted the ‘Ministerial Declaration’ on
inclusive, resilient, and people-centred urban development and proposed the ‘BRICS Urban Research and
Knowledge Network’ to strengthen urban cooperation among member nations.
·
The Forum was organised under the theme “Cities for People:
BRICS Cooperation for Inclusive and Resilient Urban Futures”.
5. FIRST
BATCH OF 17 NDA WOMEN CADETS
·
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) commissioned
the first batch of 17 women cadets trained at the
National Defence Academy (NDA) into the Indian Army (IA), Indian
Navy (IN) and Indian Air Force (IAF)
after completing pre-commission training .
·
The
IA commissioned nine
women officers at the Indian Military
Academy (IMA), Dehradun, Uttarakhand.
·
The IAF commissioned five
women officers at the Air Force
Academy (AFA), Dundigal, Hyderabad, Telangana.
·
IN commissioned three women officers at the Indian Naval Academy (INA), Ezhimala, Kerala.
·
The Supreme
Court (SC) held that excluding women from NDA admissions violated
constitutional equality provisions under Articles 14 and 16, resulting in the opening
of NDA entry to women.
6. INDIA
POST LAUNCHES DRONE-BASED MAIL SERVICE
·
the Department of Posts (DoP) under
the Ministry of Communications launched its first
drone-based mail and parcel transmission service between the Mandi Head Post Office and Rehardhar Branch Post Office in
Himachal Pradesh(HP).
·
The DoP plans to extend drone-based mail transmission to around 150 routes in HP and Assam within the next 2–3 months.
7. ‘CODENE’-
INDIA’S FIRST NUCLEAR ENGINEERING DESIGN CENTRE
·
The Indian
Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IIT-H),Telangana,
will establish ‘CODENE (Centre for Design and Engineering in Nuclear Energy)’, India’s
1st Centre of Design Excellence in Nuclear Engineering at its campus in
Hyderabad, Telangana.
·
The new centre is expected to bolster India’s capabilities in nuclear engineering
design and generate skilled workforce for the country’s expanding nuclear
energy programme.
8. 16TH
BRICS AGRICULTURE MINISTERS’ MEETING
·
The 16th BRICS (Brazil,
Russia, India, China, South Africa) Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting was
held in Indore, Madhya Pradesh (MP).
·
Theme “Building
for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, and Sustainability (BRICS)”
·
The
meeting concluded with the unanimous adoption of the Indore
Declaration, establishing
four major agricultural cooperation platforms for agricultural cooperation.
·
The
four major establishments are the BRICS Network of Centres of Excellence (CoE) on Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture;
the Network on Digital Agriculture;
the Global Forum on Farmers’ Rights in
Seed Systems; and the BRICS AGRIN
(Agro-Inputs, Genetic Resources and Information Network) Framework.
9. WIPO
GLOBAL TOP 20 PATENT RANKINGS
·
Jio Platforms (JPL),
the technology arm of Reliance Industries Limited(RIL), entered into the global
top 20 in the latest Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT) rankings for
2025 released by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
·
It is
the only Indian technology innovator to
break into the Global Top-20 coveted
list.
·
China topped
the world in 2025 PCT filings with 73,718 applications, followed by the USA
(52,617) and Japan (47,922).
·
India ranked 12th globally
with 3,070 PCT applications.
·
For the ninth consecutive year, Huawei
Technologies (China) remained the world’s top Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applicant, filing 7,523
applications in 2025.
10.
UZBEKISTAN JOINED NDB
·
The Republic of Uzbekistan became
the 10th member and shareholder of the New
Development Bank (NDB) after ratifying the NDB
Articles of Agreement (AoA), marking the first entry
of a Central Asian country into the bank.
·
The NDB is a multilateral
development bank established jointly by the BRICS states (Brazil, Russia,
India, China, and South Africa).
·
It was agreed upon during the 6th BRICS Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil (2014)
and became fully operational in 2015.
·
The NDB established
its initial authorized capital at USD 100 billion.
·
Headquarters:
Shanghai, China.
·
The current membership includes the original
BRICS nations along with Bangladesh (2021),
United Arab Emirates (2021), Egypt (2023), Algeria (2025), and Uzbekistan
(2026).
