The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests has mooted corporate funding of zoos and recruitment of volunteers to give a fillip to Indian zoos, on the lines of the foreign zoos, to make them a great attraction for tourists.
The monthly Rs 2500 payment for poor women is expected to cost Rs 11,000 crore while the pension scheme of Rs 2000 for every senior citizen will cost around Rs 4100 crore. The Yamuna clean up will cost over Rs 10,000 crore while a similar amount is required to upgrade Delhi's hospitals. Ultimately, the new BJP government will have no choice but to ask the centre for financial support, notes Rashme Sehgal.
8 Asiatic lions in the zoo in have tested positive for COVID-19 after their saliva samples were thoroughly examined by CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, Rakesh Mishra, advisor of the premier research institute said.
A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar asked the ministry of environment and forests as to what they have done in the matter to control the situation.
In order to keep the interest of new and small players intact, the coal ministry is offering only small- and medium-sized coal mines in the second round.
The eight cheetahs flown to Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park (KNP) from Namibia in mid-September will be moved to an acclimatisation enclosure this month before being released into the wild, a member of the Centre's task force on the big cats has said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said the target date for achieving 20 per cent ethanol-blending with petrol has been advanced by five years to 2025 to cut pollution and reduce import dependence.
The Centre has disallowed installation of mobile towers in core or critical tiger habitats in the country, according to new guidelines by the environment ministry.
'Look at the post mortem reports. Every body (of the 10 Kuki-Zo youth who were killed) has almost 12 bullet marks on it.' 'Why do they have to fire so much even if they wanted to kill them?' 'One or two shots would be enough to kill them. Why then they had to fire so many bullets on them?'
The environment ministry is likely to allow generic modification of food crops.
Government sources said Modi will also chair meetings to review the aftermath of the Cyclone Remal, especially in the north east region hit by natural disasters.
There is good news for coal mine developers who want to go in for expansion. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), in its new notification, said the developers that had already bagged environment clearance for their existing projects might be exempted from the stipulated public hearings for obtaining clearances for their expansion projects, provided they met certain criteria specified by the ministry.
'With technology advancing, we should go all out and put up solar, wind, pumped storage, and battery, and make India go green.'
'This is not a Sanjay Baru or Natwar Singh type of book. It's not a memoir. It's not a book to reveal conversations, real or imaginary. This is not a book to position myself at the centre of the world.' Jairam Ramesh on his stint as environment minister.
In a shake up ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan resigned on Saturday from the Union Council of Ministers and more may be in line for being drafted into party work.
The Bharatiya Janata Party in Arunachal Pradesh has urged the union home affairs ministry to pay special attention and expedite 'action-oriented' measures to build defence infrastructure in the state.
The Environment and Forests Ministry has put on hold construction of Nirma's 1.91 tonne per annum capacity cement plant, along with its captive power and coke oven plant near Padhiarka village in Bhavnagar district. It has sent them a show-cause notice, as to why its environment clearance of December 2008 should not be revoked.
The central government's ambitious Project Cheetah is facing a major problem, with the animals translocated from South Africa developing a "winter cover", a thick coat of fur, in anticipation of African winter, the Supreme Court was told on Monday.
The ministry of home affairs has suspended the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) licence of prominent public think-tank Centre for Policy Research (CPR) over violation of laws, officials said on Thursday.
'Modi knows the people here are opposed to this project, but he is using the might of government to push this port down our throats.'
Withdraws petition from green tribunal, makes fresh plea for Lanjigarh project.
The death of 40 per cent of cheetahs translocated from South Africa and Namibia to the Kuno National Park (KNP) in less than one year doesn't present a "good picture", the Supreme Court said on Thursday, and asked the Centre to not make it a prestige issue and explore the possibility of shifting the animals to different sanctuaries.
Sitharaman, who was holding the Commerce portfolio (Independent charge), was on Sunday promoted to the Cabinet rank as was Goyal.
The Union Environment Ministry sent a office memorandum to the state in this regard following directions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sources said.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has questioned the Centre for "entertaining" Kerala's request for approving environment study to construct a new dam at Mullaperiyar in her state, saying it was in contravention to the Supreme Court order.
Almost every home in this area has a slogan 'Jal, Jangal, Jameen' painted outside. Rashme Sehgal reports for Rediff.com on the four-year battle to save the Mahan forest in Madhya Pradesh.
Use of 10 per cent ethanol-blended petrol has led to a saving of over Rs 41,000 crore in the foreign exchange for the country, minister of state for environment, forest and climate change Ashwini Kumar Choubey said on Wednesday. Speaking at an online event of auto industry body SIAM on sustainable mobility, the minister said the government is working in multiple ways to encourage sustainable mobility. "India recently achieved 10 per cent ethanol blending target 5 months in advance, saving over Rs 41,000 crore worth of fuel imports for the nation," Choubey noted.
The amount of money lying unclaimed with the Life Insurance Corporation of India dwarfs the budgets of many ministries. There was Rs 21,539.5 crore which lay unclaimed with India's largest insurance company, according to details in the initial public offer (IPO) document it filed over the weekend. The regulatory documentation is ahead of LIC selling shares to the public through the stock exchange for the first time this financial year. This will be India's largest ever public listing.
'Heavy rains are not the primary reason for landslides in Wayanad.' 'There are all sorts of (human) intervention going on in that area.'
Atishi will have a brief tenure in office as assembly elections in the national capital are due in February.
'With the deployment of a higher degree of mechanisation, awarding contractual mining to MDOs and operational efficiency, we feel confident of achieving the desired target.'
As many as 417 infrastructure projects, each entailing an investment of Rs 150 crore or more, have been hit by cost overruns of more than Rs 4.77 lakh crore in September this year, an official report said. According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, which monitors infrastructure projects worth Rs 150 crore and above, out of 1,763 projects, 417 reported cost overruns and as many as 842 projects were delayed. "Total original cost of implementation of the 1,763 projects was Rs 24,86,402.70 crore and their anticipated completion cost is likely to be Rs 29,64,345.13 crore, which reflects overall cost overruns of Rs 4,77,942.43 crore (19.22 per cent of original cost)," the ministry's latest report for September 2023 said.
India will require new technical solutions and approaches to solve environmental problems.
Jwala (Namibian name Siyaya) had also given birth to four cubs last March. However, only one of them survived.
With a 50 per cent increase in the last four years, Madhya Pradesh has the maximum number (785) of tigers in the country, followed by Karnataka (563), Uttarakhand (560), and Maharashtra (444), according to the data.
A Supreme Court-constituted panel has asked the Union environment ministry to amend or withdraw the guidelines related to setting up zoos and safaris within tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries to discourage the use of wildlife habitats for tourism activities which are non-site specific.
With over 3,000 species of plants, 26 interconnected lakes and the 250-year-old Great Banyan Tree -- the largest in the world -- the Indian Botanic Garden is a veritable treasure, discovers Payal Singh Mohanka.
In a statement, the ministry also said several steps have been planned to support the cheetah project, including the establishment of a Cheetah Research Center with facilities for rescue, rehabilitation, capacity building, and interpretation.
'Interim Budget has ignited the entrepreneurial spirit.'
Issuing notices to the state, the yoga centre, and 14 other respondents, the court issued the interim order of stay.
