ASSAM

Assam, Meghalaya CMs meet to resolve border disputes in 6 areas

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The Chief Ministers of Assam and Meghalaya held a second round of meeting to resolve the interstate dispute in the remaining six areas along the 884.9 km border of the two Northeastern states. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his Meghalaya counterpart Conrad K. Sangma had signed a Memorandum of Understanding on March 29 last year in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah “resolving” six of the 12 disputed areas in the first phase.

Sarma and Sangma accompanied by their ministerial colleagues and senior officials in a meeting in Guwahati on Wednesday decided to initiate the process to resolve the interstate border disputes in the remaining six areas. After the meeting, the Assam Chief Minister said that in the last part of June the Chief Ministers of both states would visit Karbi Anglong and West Jaintia Hills districts, where some unrest is going on, as a goodwill gesture.

Country’s biggest ‘detention centre, Matia transit camp becomes operational in Assam’s Goalpara

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The countrys biggest “detention centre”, now renamed “transit camp” for a human touch at Matia in lowerAssamsGoalparadistrict, has become operational with the first batch of inmates being shifted to the newly built facility from another transit camp at the Goalpara district jail on Friday. The transit camp was built at a cost of around Rs 64 crore.

Official sources in the prison department said that altogether there are around 219 “declared foreigners” lodged in all the transit camps in Assam, including the standalone transit camp in Matia. Before the Matia centre became operational, all the inmates were being kept in these six jails. The detention centres, which housed people declared foreigners by foreigners , quasi-judicial bodies, were renamed transit camps in 2021.

In a first, Assam gets cargo from Patna via Bangladesh

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A new milestone was achieved in regional connectivity when Union minister for , shipping and waterwaysSarbananda Sonowaland chief ministerHimanta Biswa Sarmareceived MV Lal Bahadur Shastri, the cargo vessel carrying 200 metric tonnes of foodgrain from Patna, by traversing 2,350 km through the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol (IBP) route.
The vessel arrived in Pandu port carrying foodgrains for Fci.

The vessel passed through Bhagalpur, Manihari, Sahibganj, Farakka, Tribeni, Kolkata, Haldia, Hemnagar, IBP route through Khulna, Narayanganj, Sirajganj, Chilmari and then National Waterway-2 through Dhubri and Jogighopa. The journey of the vessel was flagged off by Sonowal from Patna docks, through Ganga, which culminated its month-ago journey in Brahmaputra.

320 hectares of Assam forest land encroached: Assam forest department

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The Assamforestdepartment has admitted before the Gauhatihigh courtthat 320 hectares of reserved forestlandofLongai Reserved ForestinKarimganjdistrict have beenencroachedby people fromMizoram.

The petitioners advocate said the divisional forest officer in its affidavit stated that about two/three families from Mizoram encroached upon 7.58 hectares of the reserved forest land at Chutobubirbond inside Singla reserved forest along the Assam-Mizoram Border and constructed temporary houses and also raised during the Covid-19-induced lockdown. However, they were evicted and the area was cleared.

Jalotsav to assess quality of tap water in Assam

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TheAssamgovernment will launchJalotsavto assess the quality and functionality status of piped water supply to every household even as statistics revealed that barely 42% households in the most populous northeastern state have gottap waterconnection under the Centres flagship scheme for drinking water,Jal Jeevan Mission(JJM).

While seven states and Union Territories in the country have achieved 100% target in ensuring piped water to rural households three years after its launch, in Assam more than households, a bigger Percentage of government schools and anganwadi centres have benefited from JJM.

Of the 3.3 crore Assam Population, only 1.11 lakh rural population had tap water connection in the state before the launch of JMM in 2019. Barely, 1.5% of Assams population was getting tap water connection at that time. Now, after three years 28.27 lakh people of the state, accounting for 42.1% of the targeted population, have tap water.

Assam governor highlights role of education for development

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Assam GovernorJagdish Mukhihas underlined the role of Education as a crucial driver of socio- and in the creation ofsustainable livelihood and happiness. Speaking at the ninth convocation of Assam down town University here, the governor said the education system needs to continually address the rapidly changing professional ecosystem to produce employable human Resources.

TheNational Education Policy, which envisages to develop good human beings capable of rational thought and action, should be assiduously implemented by educational institutions of the country.

The Assam down town University is in the process of restructuring its curriculum encompassing flexibility with choice-based course structure in order to provide scope and freedom to learners to acquire specialised knowledge.

Edible Oil- Oil Palm Business Summit at Guwahati

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The National Mission on Edible Oil- Oil Palm Business Summit was held on 6 October at Guwahati.

Highlights:

The summit began under Union Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomars Chairmanship and showcased a film on oil palm plantation along with the watering of the oil palm plant.

The summit is part of PM Modis vision for holistic and balanced progress of the North East.

The Government decided to intervene with the promotion of oil palm in the Northeastern states was to make Northeastern states into an oil hub of India.

Special packages and aid for the northeastern states will improve the socio-economic status of farmers and contribute to more EMPLOYMENT openings in the Northeastern states.

The Mission has launched with a total expenditure of Rs 11040 crore.

It will bring an additional area of about 6.5 lakh hectares under the Oil Palm plantation in the next 5 years.

Out of this, 3.28 lakh hectares will be from Northeastern states while 3.22 lakh hectares will be from the rest part of India.

Will weed out ghost schools, teachers: Assam education minister Ranoj Pegu

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Assameducation minister RanojPeguhas vowed to weed out ghost teachers along with ghost schools. The minister was referring to those teachers who have not yet uploaded their profile on the Education portal, Shiksha Setu.

The announcement came after the annual grants for the government-run schools were released on Sunday. However, funds were not pumped into those institutions from which the teachers did not comply with the government instructions of updating their profile on Siksha Setu, which gives comprehensive details about all the schools.

The Assam State Primary Teachers Association (ASPTA) has been at loggerheads with the education minister and the , decrying the failure to officially create the posts of headmasters. In protest, the teachers have not uploaded the required data on the portal. However, Pegu warned that salaries of such teachers may be stopped in the next two months, if they dont toe the line.

Assam reported a drop in school enrolment by 4.5 lakh in the last one year (from 2021-22 to 2022-23). This raised concern in the education department, which suspected manipulation of students’ data by the school authorities earlier for getting more monetary benefits in the name of ‘ghost students’.

Assam showed a massive improvement in energy efficiency implementation putting itself as the top performing state in its group, according to the StateEnergy Efficiency Index(SEEI) report for 2021-22. It was released by Union power and new and renewable energy minister RK Singh.

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This is a step towards achieving the long-term goal of transitioning to a net-zero economy by 2030.

The index developed by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) in association with Alliance for an Energy-Efficient Economy (AEEE), assesses the annual progress of states and UTs in energy efficiency implementation using 51 indicators aligned with national priorities. These range across seven sectors – buildings, , Municipality, transport, Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture, distribution companies (DISCOMs), and cross-sectoral initiatives. The maximum score for the SEEI 2021-22 is 100.

Five states -Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan and Telangana are in the ‘front-runner category’ (60 points), while Assam (50.5), Haryana, Maharashtra, and Punjab are in the ‘achiever’ category (50-60 points). Eight states, namely Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh are in the ‘contender’ category and the rest in the bottom ‘aspirant’ category.

In the previous index of 2020, Assam was placed in the ‘contender’ category with a total score of 31 points and was in the ‘aspirant’ category in 2019.
The SEEI tracks progress in managing states’ and India’s energy footprint, driving energy efficiency policies and programmes at the state and local level, he said.

Assam inks MoU with NDDB for dairy devpt in state

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Assam signed an MoU withNational Development Board(NDDB) for holistic dairy development in state through an Rs 2000-crore joint venture company aimed at processing 10 lakh litres of milk daily through six new milk processing units in seven years.
Under the arrangement, 15,000 high milk-yielding Gir cows of Gujarat will be inducted in the state to ensure higher returns to the dairy farmers besides creating huge EMPLOYMENT at various levels of the milk value chain.

The six dairy processing facilities will be set up across Assam where milk from more than 4100 dairy Cooperative Societies shall be processed, packed and marketed. The plan also envisages setup of Infrastructure for cattle feed and silage manufacturing within the state. The State Government will ensure financial aid and support to the planned interventions of this joint venture through the concerned departments with the support of Government of India under various schemes of the government.

This joint venture will also be guided, mentored and managed by NDDB, which will also be bringing in tried and tested technological innovations like sex-sorted semen, ration balancing programme, ethno veterinary medicine, manure management projects etc.