19th April 2015

>>Three Indian race walkers - Khushbir Kaur, Manish Rawat and Sandeep Kumar - on Sunday qualified for next year's Rio Olympics after creditable performances in the IAAF Race Walking Challenge at Rio Maior in Portugal. 

• National women's 20km walk record holder Khushbir Kaur clocked 1:33:58, better than Rio 2016 qualification time of 1:35, though she finished 13th in the race. 

• In the men's 20km race walk, Manish Rawat logged a personal best performance to finish in top 10 with a timing of 1:22:50, well above Rio Games qualification time of 1:24. 
• National 50km race walk record holder Sandeep Kumar also qualified for Rio Games with a 14th-place finish in 1:23:32 though he received one warning. 

>>Nasim Zaidi took over the 20th Election Commissioner of India on Sunday.  

• Zaidi said holding free and fair elections "at all cost" will be his aim. Zaidi will have a tenure up to July, 2017 when he attains the age of 65.
• Zaidi took over from Hari Shankar Brahma who had retired on April 18^th  2015

• Incidentally, he is the only one left in the three-member constitutional body as the others have retired.
• The government is yet to fill up the vacancies of two Election Commissioners.

>> India’s Y Pranjala has won the Asian Junior Tennis championship title on 18 April 2015.

• In the final match played at New Delhi she defeated China’s Zheng Wushuang with a 5-7, 6-2, 7-5 scoreline.
• She also had won the Asian Junior Tennis doubles title along with partner Zheng Wushuang on 17 April 2015

>>India's first satellite - Aryabhata - was launched successfully by a Russian rocket Kosmos-3M launch vehicle  on an April 19^th day 40 years ago, taking the country on an exciting space odyssey as far as the Moon and the Mars.

• It was named after great Indian astronomer and built by ISRO.Objective of this project was to gain experience in building and operating a satellite in space.

>>The Maharashtra government is considering a proposal to link ration cards with Aadhaar numbers so as to enhance the Public Distribution System (PDS) in the state.

• The move is being planned with a view to ensuring that the benefits provided by the government reach the beneficiaries and the process remains transparent.

>>PM Modi was also voted among the 100 most influential people in the world in an online poll by readers of Time magazine. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also featured in that list.

• Writing about Modi in the TIME 100 issue, US President Barack Obama notes that the Indian Prime Minister has “laid out an ambitious vision to reduce extreme poverty, improve education, empower women and girls and unleash India’s true economic potential.”
• Apart from PM Modi, ICICI Bank chief Chanda Kochchar and Vikram Patel, co-founder of the NGO Sangath and the Centre for Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, have also been named in the annual list of the most influential people in the world "who are shaping the future".