ANDHRA PRADESH

Andhra Universityhas received a proposal to be associated with the IndianNavyto offer academic training toAgniveers. This is the first time for any Indian university to receive such a proposal related to Agniveers. For the uninitiated, the approved the Agnipath scheme in 2022, which allows the selected youth to serve in the Armed Forces for a period of four years.
As per the initial proposals, faculty from Andhra University will visit the Navy establishments to offer courses/training sessions to the in-service Agniveers in domain areas such as Disaster Management, fire safety, Waste Management, arboriculture, etc.

The has put the reorganisation of districts on fast track and decided to complete the bifurcation and allocation of employees to the new districts by March 10.
Ahead of finalising boundaries of new districts, the state level committee started taking stock of grievances, complaints and representations received in the districts with district collectors on Wednesday.

The committee held discussions with district collectors V Prasanna Venkatesh (West Godavari), J Nivas (Krishna), Vivek Yadav (Guntur) and Pravin Kumar (Prakasam) who attended the meeting held in Vijayawada.

The Centre has cleared the decks for the construction of integrated office complex for Marine Exports Promotion and Development Authority (MPEDA) atBhimavaramof West Godavari district.

The integrated complex is expected to benefit thousands of aqua farmers and exports. The regional office would also house an advanced laboratory to test the feed and also the end produce before export. AP is the biggest exporter of marine products in the country with a share over 55-60 per cent. Interestingly, more than 50 per cent of the APs marine produce is coming from Bhimavaram region.

MPEDA had agreed to locate the regional office in Bhimavaram, the hub of marine exports in the state, almost four years ago. The proposal was cleared by the authorities at MPEDA headquarters in Kochi following an initiative taken by a senior official worked in the state. He exerted pressure on the top management to set up an exclusive regional office including an ultra-modern laboratory in Bhimavaram for the benefit of the local farmers. He worked overtime in prevailing upon the district collector and top officials in the Marketing department to get the land allocated in the local Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture market yard. The regional office would help local farmers in getting clearance for exports, and quality testing reports.

After recovering from the Covid-19 shocker, the state has improved itstaxrevenues in the last fiscal. As per the latest report released by theRBI, the state reported a healthy Growth rate of over 50-60 per cent in both state’s own tax revenues and non-tax revenues.

Interestingly, the state’s own tax revenues soared by nearly 100 per cent since the bifurcation of the state. The state own tax revenues stood at 42,168 crore in the first year of the bifurcation 2014-15. However, the tax revenues witnessed a drop by next year as the systems were not completely settled in the new state.

The revenues dipped to 39,907 crore in 2015-16. However, the tax revenue started picking up from 2016-17 when state pooled up 44,181 crore. However, these revenues were not found sufficient to handle the expenditure of various welfare schemes and proposed capital city projects.

Though the state’s own tax revenues moved upward in the consecutive years, they were never on the expected path. The tax revenues which were around 52,000 crore in 2017-18, reported just around 10 per cent growth rate by 2018-19. The state mopped up around 58,677 crore in 2018-19 in the penultimate year of TDP regime.

The state had pooled up around 57,601 crore in 2019-20 and 57,359 crore in 2020-21. “The state witnessed a slight fall in the tax revenues in two successive years only due to the Covid-19.

Major cities ofAndhra Pradesh-Vijayawada,Tirupatiand Visakhapatnam – continued their winning streak in Swachh Survekshan 2021, the results of which were released.

Vijayawada emerged as the thirdcleanest cityin the country, while Vizag retained its ninth position from last year’s survey in the category of cities with more than 10 lakh Population.

Tirupati stood third place in the category of cities with a population of one to 10 lakh population. Other major cities that made their mark in the same category were Rajahmundry (41st rank), Kurnool (70), Kakinada (103) and Nellore (107).

In overall rankings (cities with more than one lakh population), Vijayawada occupied third place, Tirupati seventh place and Vizag 18th rank. These cities also got several individual Awards.

When it comes to rankings of major states that have more than 100 , Andhra Pradesh stood fifth. Visakhapatnam district was the ninth cleanest district as per the survey, while Krishna was ranked 22nd in the same category.

Chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy directed the officials to complete the comprehensive land survey within the deadline. He also told them to process land registrations and mutations at the village secretariats.

The officials informed the chief minister that so far, survey was completed in 51 villages which were undertaken as pilot project and assured that another 650 villages will be completed by December 2021, covering one village from each mandal.

Similarly, the survey will be completed in 2,400 villages by June 22, 2022 and another 2,400 villages by August 2022, covering a total of 5,500 villages. Officials said by June 2023, the entire survey will be completed.

By the end of 2020, 636 children, including 549 from previous years, were yet to be traced. In 2019, 549 children were yet to be traced.

Around 58% of the untraced children are girls while 264 are boys. With the increase in number of untraced children, the total tracing rate has dropped to 80.7% in 2020 compared to 83.3% in 2019.

Last year, a total of 2,745 children went missing, of which 2,092 were girls, accounting for 76% of cases.

In 2019, the number of cases of missing children stood at 2,476, however, the Percentage of missing girl children increased by 6% in 2020 compared to 2019. On the bright side, 2,658 children who went missing in 2020 were traced the same year.

NTPC has commissioned the biggest floating photovoltaic PV undertaking in India of 25MW power on the reservoir of its Simhadri thermal station in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. This is also the first photovoltaic project to be set up beneath the Flexibilisation Scheme.

Highlights:

This scheme was once notified through the Government of India in 2018. NTPC is additionally planning to set up a hydrogen-based micro-grid system on a pilot basis at Simhadri.

NTPCs floating solar installation covers 75 acres of the Simhadri reservoirs surface. It will produce energy from more than a lakh of photovoltaic PV modules for lighting fixtures in 7,000 households. The mission will yearly keep 46,000 tonnes of CO2 emission and 1,364 million litres of water, which is sufficient to meet the requirement of 6,700 households in a year.