The Centre on Monday earmarked a separate Rs 2,217 crore for 42 urban centres to tackle air pollution and announced the much-awaited voluntary vehicle scrapping policy to phase out old and polluting vehicles, even as it shrunk the budgetary allocation for the environment ministry from the last fiscal by nearly eight percent. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech for 2021-22, announced a total of Rs 2869.93 crore for the ministry, Rs 230 crore less than the last fiscal. Officials said the outlay has been lesser this time as the economy is recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The project involves development of a military-civil, dual-use airport; international container trans-shipment terminal; a gas, diesel, and solar-based power plant, and a township.
The top court said a balanced approach of sustainable development ensuring environmental safeguards needs to be resorted to while dealing with the issue of sand mining.
This alternative is being planned as the existing projects continue to be delayed due to land acquisition troubles. The ministry is thinking of adding new track lines to its existing eastern and western DFCs passing major areas in the proposed stretches, senior officials said.
'But will there be matching action as far as tribals are concerned on the ground?'
About railways sector, the Survey said that it is facing stiff competition from other modes of transportation and the government is initiating various transformative measures to keep railways on track.
Two senior government functionaries said the task has been given to the North Eastern Space Application Centre (NESAC), a joint initiative of the Department of Space (DoS) and the North Eastern Council (NEC).
The Delhi State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) has granted environmental clearance to the proposal for the construction of the 'Executive Enclave' which will house the new Prime Minister's Office and Cabinet Secretariat.
High-pitched identity politics, which is the norm in the northeast, has continued to compound the boundary problem.
Two years after the Centre's flagship village electrification scheme Saubhagya concluded with the government claiming 99.9 per cent success, several states have added close to 1.1 million rural households that remain to be connected to the electricity grid. This new list includes earlier unwilling households that have now agreed to have a metered connection and also those built or discovered in the states' surveys since 2019. Assam and Uttar Pradesh are the states that have the majority of such new additions.
Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said on Wednesday that he along with Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma will meet Union home minister Amit Shah to submit the recommendation of the two Northeastern states for resolving the boundary dispute in six areas.
'An earthquake of a slightly higher magnitude in the Western Himalayan region is going to be catastrophic -- not just because of the fragility of the region but because of how densely we have occupied it.'
'We are rushing to 'develop' without carefully valuing natural areas.' 'With careful land use planning and scientific zonation at least 5 to 10 per cent of the country's land can be secured for tigers and other such species, and another 5 to 15 per cent kept under low-impact uses to support biodiversity that can coexist with human uses.'
According to the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and UP geology and mining directorate reports, gold reserves totalling 2,944 tonnes have been found in the Sona Pahadi and Hardi blocks of the backward Sonbhadra district.
'It will be wrong to raise the expectations of tribals because of a tribal President. 'Tribal issues have not been resolved for 150 years.'
Rajesh Karkera journeys through verdant countryside to the little-explored pristine Lonar lake in eastern Maharashtra.
Karunanidhi was convinced that using the 2G cases against the DMK and reopening the fodder case against Lalu Prasad Yadav were products of the Congress leadership's short-sightedness. A revealing excerpt from A S Panneerselvan's Karunanidhi: A Life.
'Defaulters like Mallya can't be offloaded, but activists like me are. And that too for raising questions.' 'Today, what is the meaning of development?' 'Take over land, water and forest from the Adivasis and hand it over to corporates.' 'I am surprised how a minister who is supposed to protect the forests and the environment is happy reaching out to investors for more and more clearances.'
India's only live volcano in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands which had started showing activity in the year 1991 after being dormant for over 150 years has once again started spewing ash, researchers at Goa-based National Institute of Oceanography said on Friday.
Two senior government functionaries said the central government does not want to take any decision that may further escalate the ground situation.
'Guarding the borders in extreme weather conditions is not easy and most people don't realize it is a very tough job.'
There's a need to train 40,000 pilots over the next year-and-a-half.
The polar satellite launch vehicle-C42 launch vehicle carrying the two satellites blasted off from the first launchpad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 10.08 pm.
Three mine owners, on whose plea the Supreme Court recently stayed mining operations of a company owned by the powerful Reddy brothers--who are Karnataka ministers, were attacked on Monday by an eight-member gang in Bellary.
Nine mineral-rich states -- Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Telangana -- are readying 75 blocks for auction.
"Chau violated all the norms. Moreover, he had also not informed the hotel (that he was visiting the area)."
The severe cyclonic storm, which brought in its wake heavy rain coupled with gale wind till early Sunday, uprooted hundreds of trees and snapped cables in Kolkata and in the coastal districts of North and South 24 Parganas and East Midnapore, bring life to a near-halt.
Harish Kapadia is the only Indian to win mountaineering's most prestigious award.
Govt keen to revive business sentiment in india.
Even in this darkest hour of a crumbling economy and raging disease, there is hardly a murmur of protest against the government, observes Sumit Bhattacharya.
Behind the state's success in containing coronavirus positive cases is one novel initiative -- Active Case Finding or ACF, which even Prime Minister Narendra Modi endorsed for the bigger states to follow. The ACF campaign began in April with 16,000 basic health personnel, ASHA, anganwadi workers and auxiliary nurse midwives (ANM) out on foot trekking to most mountain valleys, snow-bound districts and remote passes of the state, reports Ashwani Sharma.
Investors engaged in profit booking in the recent gainers at attractive and higher valuations.
Gimmicks such as appointing high-profile brand ambassadors like Sachin Tendulkar will not work.
Anik Jain, founder and CEO at Symbo, will answer your questions on insurance -- life, health, motor, travel, etc -- on a weekly basis.
An animal rights activist on June 15 asked the court to quash the three notifications that declared nilgai (blue bulls), monkeys and wild boars as vermin in the states of Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, respectively.
Sixteen deaths in rain and flood-related incidents have been reported from western Maharashtra in the last seven days, while the toll in Karnataka rose to five since Sunday.
'A lot of unauthorised encroachments have taken place in our forest area.' 'The landslides are partly because of such encroachments.' 'The other factor is deforestation.' 'Protection of forest resources is not on the agenda of any government.' 'The damage caused by the rain in Kerala is a man-made factor.'
'Our only child. A Communist.' 'There was an encounter by the police inside this room, five years ago. He was shot in one arm, but managed to escape.' 'Missing since then. May Jesus keep him alive.' A revealing excerpt from Asim Mukhopadhyay's Half Man: A Novel On The Naxal Movement.
In what appears to be the last phase of the massive rescue operation, National Disaster Response Force jawans have recovered 21 more bodies from under the debris of landslide in Malin village in Pune district, which takes the death toll in the July 30 disaster to 151.
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