ASSAM

The Assam cabinet took several key decisions, including approval to sell liquor through online platform inGuwahati (GMC) areas amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The cabinet also decided to merge the Guwahati development department and urban development department to constitute the housing and urban affairs department on the lines of the Union ministry with similar nomenclature. This, Mahanta said, will help in smooth flow of funds from the Centre for urban development.

“Rukni Part-IV has been found with nochild marriagecases in the past two years. It’s a good job by the Cachar District Administration, Police department and social welfare department for making it possible by creating awareness among the people of the locality. I also thank the villagers for their sense of consciousness and response to the government initiative,” said Assam minister for excise, and transport Parimal Suklabaidya.

Assamchief ministerHimanta Biswa Sarmaannounced that the Raimona reserve forest in Kokrajhar under the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR), bordering Bhutan, has been upgraded as the sixth of the state.

Announcing this on the occasion ofWorld Environment Dayhere, the chief minister said that with the new addition, the state now has sixnational parks.

The process to convert Dehing Patkai wildlife sanctuary into a national park is also under progress, he said.

The Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 says whenever it appears to the State Government that an area, whether within a sanctuary or not, is, by reason of its ecological, faunal, floral, geomorphological or zoological association or importance,needed to be constituted as a national park for the purpose of protecting, propagating or developing wild life therein or its environment.

The other five national parks in Assam are- Kaziranga, Manas, Nameri, Orang and Dibru-Saikhowa.

The Raimona national park falls under BTR’s Kokrajhar district and is a part of contiguous forest patch with an area of 422 square km covering the northern part of the notified Ripu Reserve Forest which forms the westernmost buffer to Manas Tiger Reserve in the foothills of Eastern Himalaya Biodiversity Hotspot.

The new national park Shares contiguous forest patches of Phipsoo Wildlife Sanctuary and Jigme Singye Wangchuk National Park in Bhutan (total area of 1,9 creating a transboundary conservation landscape of more than 2,400 square km.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.