12th DECEMBER 2025 ENGLISH TNPSC CURRENT AFFAIRS PDF TNPSC SHOUTERS
Union Cabinet approves Minimum Support Price for Copra for 2026 season
- The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, has given its approval for the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for copra for 2026 season. In order to provide remunerative prices to the cultivators, Government had announced in the Union Budget of 2018-19, that MSP of all the mandated crops will be fixed at levels of at least 1.5 times of all India weighted average cost of production.
- The MSP for Fair Average Quality of milling copra has been fixed at Rs.12,027/- per quintal and for ball copra at Rs.12,500/- per quintal for 2026 season. The MSP for 2026 season is an increase of Rs.445/- per quintal for milling copra and Rs.400/- per quintal for ball copra over the previous season.
- The Government has increased MSP for milling copra and ball copra from Rs.5,250 per quintal and Rs.5,500 per quintal for the marketing season 2014 to Rs.12,027 per quintal and Rs.12,500 per quintal for the marketing season 2026, registering a growth of 129 percent and 127 percent, respectively.
- The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi today, has approved the proposal for conducting Census of India 2027 at a cost of Rs.11,718.24 crore.
- The Indian Census is the largest administrative and statistical exercise in the world. The Census of India would be conducted in two phases: (i) Houselisting and Housing Census – April to September, 2026 and (ii) Population Enumeration (PE) – February 2027 (For the UT of Ladakh and snow bound non-synchronous areas of UT of Jammu & Kashmir and states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, PE shall be conducted in September, 2026).
- About 30 lakh field functionaries will complete this gigantic exercise of national importance.
- Use of mobile app for data collection and the Central portal for monitoring purpose will ensure better quality data.
- Data dissemination will be much better and in a user friendly way so that all the queries on required parameters for policy making will be made available on the click of a button.
- Census-as-a-service (CaaS) will deliver data to ministries in a clean, machine-readable and actionable format.
- The Union Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi today has approved for the Policy for Auction of Coal Linkage for Seamless, Efficient & Transparent Utilisation (CoalSETU) by creation of new window named "CoalSETU window" in the NRS Linkage Policy to utilise coal for any industrial use and export. The new policy adds to the series of coal sector reforms being undertaken by the Government.
- The Policy will allow allocation of coal linkages on auction basis on long-term for any industrial use and export by adding a separate window named CoalSETU in the NRS (Non-Regulated Sector) Linkage Auction Policy of 2016 wherein any domestic buyer requiring coal can participate in the linkage auction. The coking coal shall not be offered under this window.
- The existing policy for auction of coal linkages for the NRS provides for allocation of all fresh coal linkages to NRS viz. Cement, Steel (Coking), Sponge Iron, Aluminium, and Others [excluding Fertilizer (Urea)] including their Captive Power Plants (CPPs) to be auction based. As per the present policy of NRS Linkage, the sub-sectors are for specified end users only.
