A day after joining the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and state minister Chhagan Bhujbal on Monday went to meet Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to discuss allocation of portfolios in the cabinet, sources said.
'For the first time in a hundred years, the army has been taken out of the political equation. And for the first time ever, there is only one man who calls the shots. Not even Mao had this kind of power.'
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde came to the rescue of a woman patient in need of a kidney transplant by taking her on board his chartered plane from Jalgaon to Mumbai after she missed her flight from the North Maharashtra city to the state capital.
'People are suffering, we are seeing visuals on every news channel. What measures have you taken to control water wastage if water scarcity is a recurring problem in summers'
Besides, the department has sought an explanation from officials concerned for the collapse of bridges in East Champaran on June 23 and in Madhubani on June 26.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren has distributed portfolios among the new ministers, keeping key departments such as Home, Personnel, and several others to himself. The Congress' Radhakrishna Kishore was given Finance, Commercial Tax, Planning and Development Department, and Parliamentary Affairs departments. JMM's Deepak Biruwa was allotted the departments of Revenue, Registration and Land Reforms (non-registration), and Transport. Chamra Linda, another JMM leader, was allotted the departments of Schedule Tribes, Scheduled Castes, Backward Classes (except Minority Welfare). RJD's Sanjay Prasad Yadav was given the departments of Industries, and Labour, Planning, Training and Skill Development. The Congress' Irfan Ansari got Health, Medical Education and Family Welfare, besides Food, Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs, and Disaster Management departments. The chief minister also kept to himself the departments of Cabinet Secretariat, Personnel, Administrative Reforms and Official Language, Road Construction, Building Construction, and those departments yet to be distributed to anyone. Among the other ministers, JMM's Ramdas Soren was given the School Education and Literacy, and Registration departments. Party colleague Hafizul Hasan was allotted the departments of Water Resources, and Minority Welfare Department. Panchayati Raj, Rural Works, and Rural Development departments were given to Congress MLA Deepika Pandey Singh. The CM gave Drinking Water and Sanitation, and Excise and Prohibition departments to JMM's Yogendra Prasad. JMM legislator Sudhivya Kumar became the minister for Urban Development and Housing, Higher and Technical Education, and Tourism, Art Culture, Sports and Youth Affairs departments. Shilpi Neha Tirkey of the Congress was allotted Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Cooperative Department. A total of 11 MLAs took oath as ministers in the Hemant Soren government in Jharkhand on Thursday.
More than 45 lakh people in 30 out of the total 38 districts of the state have been affected by the calamity in two phases since last month, according to the Disaster Management Department.
Forty per cent of population will have no access to drinking water by 2030 and 21 cities, including New Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, will run out of groundwater by 2020.
From installing water-saving aerators on taps to using cans for washing hands and dishes, Bengaluru is adopting diverse strategies to tide over the water crisis. While several citizens have taken to social media to urge Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to make work from home mandatory for IT companies, it appears that hybrid mode will continue to be the norm for most - although with new water conservation measures in place. Co-working space provider Urban Vault has, for instance, installed smart water meters to detect leakage.
A substantial deposit of petroleum and natural gas has been discovered in Pakistan's territorial waters, a cache so large its exploitation could change the country's destiny, according to a media report. A three-year survey was undertaken in collaboration with a friendly country to verify the presence of the oil and gas reserves, DawnNewsTV quoted a senior security official as saying on Friday.
The river has been flowing well above the danger mark and threatens to inundate settlements on the banks.
Stepping in to defuse the crisis, the Centre on Monday invited senior officials from Tamil Nadu and Kerala for discussions on the Mullaperiyar Dam issue even as the Supreme Court-appointed empowered panel decided to send a two-member team to the site for an on-the-spot assessment.
It's time we remembered the fundamental: water cycle and life cycle are one.
The Bihar government has prepared an extensive action plan for completing Kosi breach closure work by November 30, official sources said.
If Xi Jinping is dethroned in the future, the instrument for that may well be embedded within the PLA, notes former foreign secretary Shyam Saran.
The highest water-use efficiency of more than $ 50 per cubic metre is in Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Israel, Denmark, Finland, and Great Britain while the lowest is in Central and South Asia, including India, at less than $ 10 per cubic metre.
'If all of us (all the 57 Shiv Sena MLAs) stand together we can change the dynamic. We are not afraid of anyone.'
'The intensity and frequency of heatwaves will be much higher than in previous years over Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.'
Till now, some water from the Nira Deoghar dam in Pune was being diverted to Baramati and Indapur (a part of Baramati Lok Sabha constituency).
'The natural barrier that is Aravalli, you are demolishing it, then who will stop the desert?' 'In future, I predict that people will roam around with oxygen cylinders in Delhi because they won't be able to breathe.'
A siren giving a warning about tsunami erroneously started playing from the Early Warning Dissemination System at Porvorim near Panaji, triggering panic among the local residents, an official said on Thursday.
'When an establishment operates despite demolition or closure orders, without proper fire exits, evacuation plans or safety audits, and yet is allowed to host large crowds, the state cannot hide behind the language of accident.' 'The authorities were aware of the risks and of the violations, but chose not to act decisively because doing so would have inconvenienced those with influence and financial stakes.' 'In such a scenario, the moral and legal responsibility for the resulting deaths moves from negligence towards culpability; calling it 'murder' is a way of underlining that these lives were sacrificed at the altar of greed and complicity, not fate.'
'Our vision is to innovate as many products as we can and solve as many problems as possible.'
Another instance of bridge collapse came to the fore in Bihar on Thursday, making it the 10th such incident to have been reported from the state in just over a fortnight, an official said.
The Bihar state government on Thursday sounded a high alert in the state flood affected districts following heavy rains in the state and the catchment areas of Nepal. The rising water level in major rivers in north Bihar has hundreds of thousands of people in the state.
"We are apprehending a major flood in the Mahanadi system as a huge volume of water is heading downstream," Chief Secretary Ajit Kumar Tripathy told reporters in Bhubhaneshwar.
The Maharashtra government day informed the Bombay high court that a white paper on the alleged multi-crore irrigation scam, involving bureaucrats of the water resources department and the Konkan Irrigation Development Corporation, would be ready within three weeks.
'What the US appears to be doing is to force India to be "the buyer of last resort", on whom their products can be dumped, 1.4 billion people have to eat something, so why not eat American corn?' 'What is exercising the Trump lot is the fact that most of the farms are in solidly Republican Midwestern states: Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin,' points out Rajeev Srinivasan.
The state government will seek technological help from the United States to plug the breaches in embankments and roads caused by floods.
The overall flood situation in Bihar remained grim on Monday with major rivers in spate. Around 1.5 million people have been affected by the deluge in 11 north Bihar districts, where floods have claimed 52 lives so far, official sources said.
CAG says Rs 43,270.01 cr was spent by the water resources department on 426 incomplete projects.
'We have created massive infrastructure in the past six years.'
'We have not even used 0.1% of the available resources.'
Heavy rains in Madhya Pradesh's Shivpuri and Guna districts have led to a flood-like situation, stranding people including school children. The Army has been called in for rescue and relief operations. Other districts are also affected, and the IMD has issued a heavy rain alert.
Many low-lying areas in West Bengal's sub-Himalayan region were reeling from a flood-like situation while major rivers in Bihar were flowing above the danger level at several places as unabated heavy rain lashed the country's eastern parts on Sunday.
A high-level inter-ministerial team conducted a six-hour investigation in Badhaal village, Rajouri district, Jammu and Kashmir, to ascertain the causes of death of 17 members of three families under mysterious circumstances. The team, led by a director-rank officer in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, collected samples and briefed by senior district, health and police officers. The team's visit follows the deaths of 16 people between December 7 and January 19. The investigation is ongoing, with authorities focusing on potential neurotoxins and a spring that tested positive for pesticides.
China on Tuesday called for a 'comprehensive and lasting ceasefire' between India and Pakistan, urging both countries to properly handle their differences through dialogue.
Gujarat will host the next round of G20 meetings from March 27 to April 4, during which three conclaves will be held in the state on a range of issues, where delegates from different countries will converge for participation, an official said.
This is the fourth year of drought in Marathwada in the past five years. Each of its 8,522 villages have been affected for two consecutive years.
The 28 new ministers who joined the Chouhan cabinet on July 2 include 20 of cabinet rank and eight ministers of state.
