BIHAR

More than 66,000 houses – 60,000 inGayaand 6,000 in Bodh Gaya – started getting pure and treatedGanga waterfor drinking purpose as chief minister Nitish Kumar inaugurated theGangaWater Supply Scheme.

The CM inaugurated the scheme by lighting the ceremonial lamp and unveiling the plaque by pressing the button of a remote at Mahabodhi cultural centre in Bodh Gaya. “We had started the scheme in 2019 and decided to bring Ganga water to Gaya at any cost. The promise has been fulfilled and the people of Gaya and Bodh Gaya have started getting Ganga water,” the CM said.

He added 135 litres of Ganga water would be made available per house. “Around Rs 4,175 crore has been spent over the project. Under the scheme, floodwater is lifted from Hathidah in Patna and supplied to the households in Rajgir and Gaya after treatment. Now, all the 53 wards of Gaya and nine wards of Bodh Gaya will get Ganga water through pipeline. People of Nawada will get the Ganga water by next year,” Nitish said.

He added the state guesthouse under construction near Mahabodhi cultural centre would be completed by next year.

The CM also inaugurated another Ganga water booth at Ramsagar in Gaya town. From Ramsagar, the CM reached world heritage Mahabodhi Mahavihara in Bodh Gaya and offered prayers for peace and prosperity in the cstate.

BiharCM Nitish Kumar said his government would soon make arrangements forinter-level teachingin all 8,387gram-panchayatsacross the state.

Addressing a Jan-Samvad programme at the Resources“>Water Resources departments inspection bungalow at Tarapur in Munger district, he said, Necessary arrangements for TEACHING upto the 9th and 10 th classes have been made in all gram-panchayats in the state. Inter-level teaching is being done in more than 5,000 panchayats. Arrangements for the inter-level teaching will be made in the rest of panchayats in near future. There will be no panchayats without the facilities of inter-level teachings.

The locals also demanded setting up of a Food Processing park at Tarapur, setting up of an auditorium, Krishi Vigyan Kendra and a Women college at Tarapur. They also demanded the beginning of the post-graduate level teaching facility at Tarapur.

In an alarming reflection of deteriorating air quality in the state, the top three most polluted towns out of 177 in the country on Sunday were fromBihar, with the air quality index (AQI) plunging to severe (above 400) level.Motihariwas on top of the list withAQIat 423, closely followed by 411 in Darbhanga and 401 in Siwan.

The air quality of 12 cities monitored nationally figured in the very poor list, of which 10 were from Bihar. Patnas AQI level jumped 21 notches, from 299 (poor) on Saturday to 320 (very poor) on Sunday, according to the data compiled by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) at 4pm, which is the Average of the past 24 hours.

The other cities experiencing very poor day included Begusarai (399), Buxar (362), Samastipur (357), Katihar (355), Purnia (348),Saharsa(326), Muzaffarpur (322), Bhagalpur (319) and Chhapra (317).The overall AQI of Patna was based on the readings of six air monitoring stations, out of which five were in the very poor category, including Patna City (341), BIT-Mesra (320), Eco Park (320), DRM office-Khagaul (309) and Planetarium (304). SK Memorial Hall recorded the AQI at 290 (poor zone). The average concentrations of PM 2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 micron) stood at 102 micrograms per cubic metre (g/m3) while the PM 10 (particulate matter less than 10 micron) was recorded at 174 g/m3 on Sunday. An AQI between zero and 50 is considered good, 51-100 satisfactory, 101-200 moderate, 201-300 poor, 301-400 very poor and 401-500 severe.

Around 20000 security personnel including theCentral Armed Police Force(CAPF) companies have been mobilised and deployed at various locations for ensuring security and maintaining law and order duringChhath Puja.

At least four companies of CAPF includingRapid Action Force(RAF) have been deployed at required locations in Patna, Bhagalpur, Aurangabad andMuzaffarpurfor Chhath.

Besides them, 2500 trainees ofBiharSpecial Armed Police (BSAP) and an equal number of Home guard jawans have also been mobilised for deployment and crowd control on roads, ghats and other places specially land-bound water bodies where devotees would throng for worshipping the Sun god.

After administering record 36.56 lakh vaccine doses againstCovid-19in a week, the state has set the target to vaccinate 1.25 crore eligible people by the end of this month.

The state is set to achieve the target of administering 6 crore doses to 6 crore people in six months by December-end. In the last two months, around 2.16 crore Population have been vaccinated and total 4.21 crore people in the state have received the jabs

Among the projects inaugurated by the CM included a state cancer institute at Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS), which has been set up with an expenditure of Rs 120 crore.

The Health department has expanded the service provided under Didi ki Rasoi to 32 other hospitals. Under this service, Jeevika didis are roped in to provide fresh cooked meals to patients and their attendants in hospitals.

Villagers and farmers residing around Kahalgaon super thermal power station in Bhagalpur district are living in constant fear of Health hazards and damage to their standing crops due to improper management of fly ash generated at the plant in course of production of electricity, a study has claimed.

Apart from the health hazard caused due to heavy concentration of small particles in ambient air, standing crops on around 80 hectares field near the plant was damaged last year and early this year as the ash dyke breached its embankment and pipe of ash slurry burst owing to technical fault near Chaitola and Masdaha near Kahalgaon.

The plant is owned and run by National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), a central public sector enterprise.

Similarly, several houses were flooded with ash slurry in Bokaro after a pond built to store the fly ash near the Bokaro thermal power station, also run by NTPC, overflew in September 2019. Power station authorities attribute the accident to excessive rains.

These are a few incidents of fly ash management at coal-fired power stations in Bihar and Jharkhand featured in a study carried out jointly by advocacy groups like Asar Social Impact Advisors, Research on Energy and Clean Air and Manthan Adhyay Kendra recently. The study, titled Lest we Forget – A status report of neglect of coal ash accidents in India (May 2019-May 2021), was released recently.

The report says penalties being levied on coal-based power plant operators have hardly improved things. Despite clear rules for fly ash management, villagers and farmers are exposed to suffer, it says.

Power Plants have failed at not only removal of ash, remediation of sites, addressing health impacts but also in paying full compensation to affected villages, report said.

State along withTelanganatopped the list in real-time reporting on integrated Health information platform (IHIP) portal in which information regarding various communicablediseasesare uploaded. Marks are given on various categories, including lab reporting, surveillance by the ANMs and diagnosis by the doctors.

The ranking is done every month and it was for the first time thatBiharoccupied first position. It had been in the top three for the last two months.