BIHAR

Union Minister Ram Chandra Pratap Singh, considered close to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, said Odisha is the “number one contender” for the special status — an opinion completely different from his party colleague’s long-standing special status demand for the eastern state.

“As per the index of , Odisha is on the bottom. Hence, Odisha is the primary candidate for special status than Bihar,” the Union Steel Minister said while interacting with the media persons.

In the latest Niti Aayog report, Bihar fared poorly on the majority of parameters like Education, Health, road Infrastructure etc. Following that report, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar demanded special status for Bihar.

He said plantation on the banks of the Ganga would help in checking the windblown dust sediments reaching the state capital and adding to its pollution load.

The study was conducted by TheEnergy and Resource Institute(TERI), centre for Environment, energy and https://exam.pscnotes.com/Climate-change”>Climate Change,Asian Development Research Institute(ADRI), Patna and Bloomberg philanthropies.

As the plantation along the Ganga was one of the suggestions made in the study, the minister said similar forestation would be made along other rivers passing through important towns of the state for checking pollution.

He also presented details of the ongoing projects at various medical college hospitals and Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) andPatnaMedical College Hospital (PMCH) for improving Health in the state.

As to improving the health infrastructure in 243 assembly constituencies, Pandey said Rs 3,959 crore would be spent on opening wellness centres, improving and strengthening the existing additional primary health centres and opening 122 community health centres.

The supplementary budget demand of the health department was part of the slightly over Rs 27,050-crore first supplementary budget that was demanded by deputy CM Tarkishore Prasad, who is also the states finance minister, for the current fiscal. The House passed the first supplementary budget by voice vote.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar asked the tourism department officials to develop the all-religion places and sites of tourist importance in a planned manner, and also make arrangements to inform tourists about the state’s cultural heritage sites both in Hindi and English languages.

“Biharis an ancient land that is rich in HISTORY, tradition and heritage. Develop the historical and religious sites in a planned manner to promote tourism and eco-tourism,” the CM said.

He added tourist inflow has increased in the state and all arrangements should be made to make their stay comfortable. The CM gave the instructions while reviewing the activities of the tourism department.

The has launched steps to prevent sales and capturing of landed properties of temples and mutts. There are more than 5,000 temples and mutts in the state but half of them have not registered themselves with theBiharState Board of Religious Trust (BSBRT) so far.

As per the data compiled by the BSBRT, there are around 2,512 unregistered temples or mutts in the state whereas the number of registered temples is around 2,499 having about 23,000 acres of land.

The city will soon get an air quality forecasting system that can alert three days in advance aboutpollutionand air quality information, like Weather forecast.

The forecast will help the stakeholders identify local sources of pollution and initiate action in the affected areas as per the graded response Climate action plan.

Bihar State Pollution Control Boardhas started the ground work to launch the System of Air Quality Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), which is already being run in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Pune.

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (Aiims) set up in the state capital Patna has launched an initiative for preparing youth to take care of elderly and poor people in the rural areas. This is seen as an initiative somewhat similar to ‘Shravan Kumar’whose story is famously known in the ancient Hindu text of Ramayana where a boy named Shravan Kumar took care of his old and blind parents.

The main objective of this initiative is to provide support to the elderly, poor and the needy along with generating EMPLOYMENT for the rural youth.

The ‘Shravan Kumar Yojana’ has been started by the Community Outreach and Telemedicine department of AIIMS-Patna, under which six Women among a total of 36 people, have been trained in its second batch. Earlier, 45 youths were trained in the first batch under this initiative.

With places of scenic beauty going untapped, the has initiated a variety of measures to promote shooting of films in a bid to cultivate its fairly new image before the world.

Chief ministerNitish Kumar, who reviewed the works of the arts, culture and youth affairs department at a meeting held here on Thursday, asked the officials concerned to simplify the official processes for clearance and provide all facilities to the interested filmmakers so that they don’t face any problems in film shooting in the state.

The CM said filmmaking in the state would not only promote tourism, but also provide opportunities to local artists and create new job opportunities.

The state government is setting up a film city in Rajgir, a prominent tourist town in Nalanda which is the Home district of Nitish, while several other sites located amid hills and other natural surroundings are being developed to draw the attention of filmmakers. Shekhodewra, a village located in Nawada district, is one such location which has been especially developed for the purpose in the state.

Bihar, with its dismal scores across key development indicators such asnutrition, child andadolescent mortality,maternal Health, years of schooling,sanitationandelectricity, has topped the list of states with the largest share of Population who arepoor, according to think tankNiti Aayogs report, which has identified 25.01% of the countrys population as multi-dimensionally poor.

More than 50% of Bihars population has been classified as poor under the national Multi-dimensional POVERTY Index (MPI), followed by Jharkhand (42.2%), Uttar Pradesh (37.8%), Madhya Pradesh (36.7%) and Meghalaya (32.7%).Keralahas the least number of poor with only 0.7% of its population classified as such. Among the Union territories, 27.4% of Dadra and Nagar Havelis population is poor, according to the MPI parameters.

The data showed 51.9% of the population in Bihar is deprived of Nutrition, followed by Jharkhand (47.8%), MP (45.5%) and Uttar Pradesh (44.5%). has the lowest Percentage of population deprived of nutrition at 13.3%.

According to the report, a household is considered deprived if any child between the ages of 0 to 59 months, or woman between the ages of 15 to 49 years or man between the ages of 15 to 54 years for whom nutritional information is available is found to be undernourished.
The national MPI baseline report based on the National Family Health Survey-4 (2015-16) has been developed by NITI Aayog in consultation with 12 ministries and in PARTNERSHIP with state governments and the index publishing agencies Oxford Universitys Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Uttar Pradesh is on top of the list with a population of nearly 5% categorised as deprived under child and adolescent mortality, followed by Bihar (4.6%), Madhya Pradesh (3.6%), Chattisgrah ( 3.3%) and Jharkhand (3.3%). Under maternal health, Bihar tops the chart with 45.6% categorised as deprived, followed by UP (35.5%), Jharkhand (33.1%) and Nagaland (33.1%).

State road construction ministerNitin Nabin inaugurated a state-of-the art command control centre (CCC) and launched a road maintenance mobile application, aimed at better monitoring of the existing as well as upcoming road projects.

Speaking on the occasion, Nabin said the CCC and road maintenance app will cover the roads having total length of 13,064km spread over 43 road divisions in the state. He claimed that the new system will work on a single platform to access details of road monitoring by engineers and officials of the department.