KERALA

The has come up with more relaxations in Sabarimala during the ongoing festival season in the wake of reduction in the Covid-19 spread in the state. The number of devotees who can visit the temple has been increased to 60,000 per day from 45,000 per day.
The government has also decided that 500 rooms that have been readied in Sannidhanam will be opened for devotees, with only one person allowed in each room. The Travancore devaswom board (TDB) has been asked to conduct sanitization in each of the rooms as per the Covid-19 protocols.

The TDB had requested the government to provide more relaxation in the wake of the decreasing number of Covid-19 cases in the state. However, the relaxations have been offered with certain conditions.

Wildlife-relatedcrimeshave increased dramatically in the state and there has been a100%rise in the number of cases registered in 2020 compared to the previous year.

According to data obtained under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, the state registered 303 cases in 2020 as against 151 in 2019 and 61 in 2018. As many as 156 cases were recorded in the state in 2021 till August 26 this year.

Most cases pertained to poaching of endangered animals and reptiles, hunting for meat and illegal trading and possession of horns, tusks, nails, and teeth. Removing tusks or nails and collecting meat from animals that died naturally is also an offence. More than 80% of the total cases registered each year are in connection with poaching of wild animals other than wild boars that cause extensive damage to standing crops.

Besides wild boars, sambar deer, spotted deer, porcupines, monitor lizards, pythons, civets and turtles are among those that fall prey to poaching. Occasionally, elephants, leopard, tigers and wild gaurs are also hunted down, say the data.

The programme will be launched in all the 152 block panchayats in the state and its maiden edition is being held at Ollukkara in the district, with a series of programmes.Prasadand revenue minister K Rajan as well senior officials of the Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture department visited the farms as well as the houses of the farmers at Ollukkara.

The programme has multiple objectives like attracting more people to farming, enhancing the crop area and productivity as well as supporting the farmers to launch units for the production of value added products, and Marketing. The farm groups will be strengthened and technologies will be provided to enhance production, value addition, storing, and reduce the input costs.

Five districts in the state are set to secure malaria elimination certification from the World Health Organization (WHO). Ernakulam, Idukki, Alappuzha, Kottayam and Pathanamthitta are the five districts which are set to achieve the target. As part of this, the state health department has started training health workers in documentation of cases reported earlier in these districts.

According to health officials, the five districts have reported no malaria cases in the past three years.

These districts, except Idukki, have reported no indigenous malaria cases since 2008. Idukki reported the last malaria case in 2016. Rest of the districts, except Thiruvananthapuram, continue to report indigenous cases till recently.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has taken exception to the state governments delay in remitting the dues to the concessionaires of various toll plazas in the state, accumulated by way of non-payment of user fee by KSRTC buses and free passes to vehicles passing through these toll plazas.

According to the documents, at least Rs 235 crore is due from the under these heads to the concessionaires. Of the five toll plazas operating on the highways in the state namely at Paliyekkara (Thrissur), Walayar (Palakkad), Kumbalam and Ponnarimangalam (Ernakulam) and Kollam, the KSRTC is paying the user fee only at Kumbalam. The concessionaire of the toll plaza in Paliyekkara alone had pegged the dues from the KSRTC at Rs 104 crore till March this year, due from the state government as the user fee by the KSRTC.

The state government had issued free passes to car, van, jeep and Light commercial vehicles that belong to within 10km radius of the Paliyekkara toll plaza, in 2012. The government had then assured the concessionaire that the user fee for such vehicles that have been issued free passes will be paid by the government. But this amount has now accumulated up to Rs 129 crore, which also is yet to be paid. Further, close to Rs 1.5 crore is due in a similar case at Kumbalam toll plaza as well.

As per the agreement between the Union Government and the state, the state would bear 25% of the cost of land acquisition for the highways in the state, while the remaining will be borne by the NHAI. The NHAI has also asked the state government to clear its Consent for bearing 25% of the acquisition cost for four various highway projects running to 336km and the development cost has been estimated at Rs 25,000 crore.

As part of the states ResilientKeralaProgram, the (WB) has sanctioned 125 million USD to the state to support the states preparedness against natural disasters, Climate-change”>Climate Change impacts, disease outbreaks and pandemics.

The Resilient Kerala Program will focus on two key areas. First, it will incorporate disaster risk planning in the master plans of urban and local self-governments to ease financial constraints on the State Government when faced with unexpected shocks. Second, it will help make the Health, Resources“>Water Resources management, Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture and road sectors more resilient to calamities.
The program is part of a programmatic series of the bank-financed operations in the state.

The first Resilient Kerala Development Policy Operation (DPO) approved in June 2019 had undertaken several initiatives. It had helped the state draft a river basin conservation and management act, which will conserve and regulate water resources and ensure their sustainable management, allocation and utilization. It had also introduced climate-resilient agriculture, risk-informed land use and Disaster Management planning. The program laid the foundations for a five-year state PARTNERSHIP framework.

The support to key sectors under the program include sustainable fiscal and Debt Management through establishing a debt management unit in the finance department to support the states efforts to scale down its debt-to-GSDP ratio to a sustainable trajectory, providing timely and adequate assistance to vulnerable households, disaster and climate-resilient urban development, create resilient public health systems, ensure an integrated and sustainable Water Resources Management, ensure sustainable and resilient food systems and create a climate-resilient road Infrastructure.

The Central Marine Research Institute (CMFRI) will provide technical support to strengthen the sustainable harvest of 11 selected shrimp and cephalopod trawl fishery Resources ofKerala.

According to the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by CMFRI directorA Gopalakrishnanwith A J Tharakan of Seafood Exporters Association of India (SEAI) on Monday, CMFRI will provide consultancy to help achieve the fisheries management target levels for these species caught by trawlers in Kerala.

CMFRI will conduct a research project aimed at assessing the stock Health and fishery performance of kiddi (karikadi) shrimp, flower tail (poovalan) shrimp, red ring deep sea shrimp, nylon shrimp, deep sea non-penaeid shrimp, squid, cuttlefish, octopus, ribbon fish and two species of threadfin breams.

The SEAI has signed an MoU with the Marine stewardship certification (MSC) for certification of these species to compete in the international seafood export market. The consultancy project aims to look at setting fisheries management target levels for these species, reporting on the incidental occurrence of sawfish, guitarfish and juvenile sharks in the trawl fishery of Kerala and providing indicative management actions.

The project will focus on the application of appropriate models tailored to the life-HISTORY patterns of the selected species and strengthening of the existing Database on the bycatch.

The Kerala government launched robotic scavenger, Bandicoot, to clean sewages in this temple town, becoming the first state in the country to use robotic technology to clean all its commissioned manholes.

Resources“>Water Resources Minister, Roshi Augustine, launched Bandicoot under the Guruvayur Sewerage Project in Thrissur district by the Kerala Water Authority (KWA), as part of the 100-day action plan of the .

“With the launch of the project in Guruvayur, manual scavenging in Kerala has ended. Now Kerala has become the first state in the country to use robotic scavengers to clean manholes,” Minister claimed in a release.

The robotic Tron Unit, which is the major component of Bandicoot, enters the manhole and removes sewage using robotic hands, similar to a man’s limbs, the release, adding that the machine has waterproof, HD vision cameras and sensors that can detect harmful gases inside the manholes.

Bandicoot, developed by Kerala-based Genrobotics, had recently bagged ‘Kerala Pride’ award at the Huddle Global 2022 conclave organised by Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM).

CPMleader PinarayiVijayanon Thursday took oath for a second consecutive term as chief minister ofKeralabreaking the decades-old alternate shift of power between Left Democratic Front (LDF) and theUnited Democratic Front(UDF) in the state.

The Kerala on Wednesday directed the government to restrict the number of participants in the ceremony view of the pandemic.

He has become the only third chief minister in the state to be re-elected and the first to continue in office after completing a full term.

Vijayan joined theCommunist Party of India Marxist(CPM) in 1964 and was elected as the 12th chief minister of Kerala after LDF came to power in 2016.

Seeking to scale up funding opportunities for early-stage startups, theKerala Startup Mission(KSUM) has stepped in by organising mentorship programmes to equip early-stage startups to gain the summer 2023 funding cycle programme of US-basedY Combinator(YC), the worlds most-desired dream accelerator programme of startups.
The KSUM, which is the nodal agency of theKeralagovernment for development and incubation activities in the state, has conducted online workshops for startups to equip them with all Resources to take part in the three-month global programme of YC, slated to be held from June to August 2023.

The US-based YC, which fulfils funding requirements of early-stage startups, is a community of over 9,000 founders and more than 3,500 startups have been funded by the community since 2005.