• Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways and MSMEs Shri Nitin Gadkari has recently inaugurated the Chamba Tunnel under Chardham Pariyojana through video conference mode.

Chamba Tunnel

• It was constructed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO).
• BRO achieved this major milestone by digging up a 440 m long Tunnel below the busy Chamba town on Rishikesh-Dharasu road Highway (NH 94).
• The construction of tunnel was a challenging task in terms of weak soil strata, continuous water seepage, heavy built up area on top thereby chances of sinking of houses, land acquisition issues, restrictions during COVID lockdown etc.
• The Tunnel will facilitate all-weather connectivity to Chardham.

Chardham

• It consist of Gangotri, Kedarnath, Yamunotri and Badrinath
• Haridwar is not a part of Chardham. It is a part of Sapta Puri.

• Heatwaves occur over India between March and June.
• Meteorologists declare a heatwave event when the maximum (day) temperature for a location in the plains crosses 40 degrees Celsius.
• Over the hills, the threshold temperature is 30 degrees Celsius.
• When the day temperature jumps by 4 to 5 degrees above the normal maximum temperature of a location, it is declared as a heatwave.
• The core heat wave zone covers the states of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Telangana and parts of Maharashtra and coastal Andhra Pradesh.

• Puntius Sanctus is a new freshwater fish which has been found recently in Velankanni, Tamil Nadu.
• The fish has been identified and named by the Department of Zoology, BJM Government College in Kollam.
• The new fish has been deposited in the Zoological Survey of India at Pune.
• It has also been registered with Zoo Bank of the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature, the official authority for naming animals.

Puntius Sanctus

• It is a silver-hued fish found in a small water body.
• The species is small in size and grows to a length of 7 cm, it bears lateral line scales and pre-dorsal scales.
• It has a protractible (extended) mouth, a pair of maxillary barbels (a sensory organ near the snout).
• The lateral line scales are found within the dermis i.e. under the skin of a fish and usually have sense organs.
• The dorsal scale row in a fish consists of a series of deep scales devoid of spines.

Long March 5B

• China has recently launched the Long March 5B rocket along with a prototype deep-space spacecraft.
• It is being reported that the launch has been successful, which will pave the way for the country’s ambitions to operate a permanent space station and sending astronauts to Moon.
• The rocket is a massive vehicle with four strap-on boosters that provide extra thrust at liftoff.
• Aboard the Long March 5 was a special prototype spacecraft that is somewhat akin to the deep-space Orion capsule NASA has been developing to people to the Moon and beyond.

Tianwen-1 mission

• The Tianwen-1 mission’s launch in July 2020 was confirmed recently by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), which has been working on the project since 2016.

About the Mission

• In July, China will launch its first Mars mission, the ‘Tianwen-1’, which is expected to land on the Red Planet’s surface in the first quarter of 2021.
• The success of the mission will make China the third country to achieve a Mars landing after the USSR and the United States.
• Named after the ancient Chinese poem ‘Questions to Heaven’, the Tianwen-1, an all-in-one orbiter, lander and rover will search the Martian surface for water, ice, investigate soil characteristics, and study the atmosphere, among completing other objectives.
• The Tianwen-1 mission will lift off on a Long March 5 rocket, a launch system developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), from the Wenchang launch centre, and will carry 13 payloads (seven orbiters and six rovers) that will explore the planet.

Pradhan Mantri VAN DHAN Yojana (PMVDY)

• Pradhan Mantri Van Dhan Yojana (PMVDY) is a Market Linked Tribal Entrepreneurship Development Program for forming clusters of tribal SHGs and strengthening them into Tribal Producer Companies.
• It is an initiative of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and TRIFED.
• Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana is launched for the holistic development and welfare of tribal population in India by plugging the infrastructure gaps and lags in human development indices.