MAHARASHTRA

Indian Railways has opened the first Pod retiring rooms for passengers of Indian Railways as well as common people, at the Mumbai Central station.

As per senior Western RAILWAY (WR) official, one is required to pay Rs 999 for 12 hours and Rs 1,999 for 24 hours to stay in this pod hotel.

It will also provide facilities like Wi-Fi, TV, adjustable mirror, small locker, and reading lights.

The pod hotel was inaugurated virtually by Union minister of state for Railways Raosaheb Danve.

Pod hotels are a significant feature of international tourism in Japan. It allows travellers to find accommodation at cheaper rates as compared to conventional hotels.

Japanese-style pod hotel in Mumbai comprise of building with multiple small capsules, which will offer overnight stay for the passengers.

These pods will provide facilities like Wi-Fi, key card access, air conditioning, CCTV surveillance, washrooms and other basic amenities.

Waiting rooms have been constructed on first floor of the station. The cheapest pod will cost Rs 999 for 12 hours. For 24 hours, it will cost Rs 1,999.

For private pod, passengers will require to pay Rs 1249 for 12 hours, and Rs 2499 for 24 hours.

The state cooperation department is planning to start an online portal to help unregistered housing societies enrol themselves. Currently, there are only 1.25 lakh registered housing societies inMaharashtra.

State cooperation minister Atul Save said the department would simplify the registration process through an online system, which will be operational soon. “This has been the demand of housing societies and their federations. It will help them register without having to visit the office in person. The system is being worked upon,” said Save.

Besides registration, a complaint redressal mechanism would be incorporated into the portal. Housing federations have been demanding a feature that will enable more societies to register themselves with the department.

After the 97th Constitutional amendment of 2011, the formation of a cooperative housing Society is a fundamental right under Article 19, and it is the duty of the state to help form societies under article 43 B of the Constitution.

In cases related to the protection of children from sexual offences (POCSO) Act, 2015, Nagpur has the third-highest crime rate in the country (16.0) after Indore (17.8) and Lucknow (16.8).
While theNCRB data especially related to offences against Women created a ripple, revealing Nagpur’s alleged dubious distinction, activists feel the city may not be as safe as expected, but still better than places like Delhi, where atrocities against women are common.

City Police chief Amitesh Kumar said womens security and safety is on the topmost priority in his vision for the city. We are continuously trying to make the city safer for women through various proactive measures, like the Damini squads dedicated to them, he added.
Social activistNeelima Deshmukh, senior fellow at the Indian Council of Social Science and Research, said the city is not safe after late evening, like Mumbai. Police may be trying to make this place safer but citizens, especially the youngsters, should be disciplined and not transgress,” she said.

Maharashtra Health officials say nearly 85,010 self-test kits have been used in the state from June to mid-August for the confirmation of Covid positivity.

The data on the use of the Mylab test kits (Coviself) were uploaded on the Indian Council of Medical Research (Icmr) web portal, as the company was considered as a laboratory and mandated the task of records update, like other laboratories.

At least 15,000plant microbial samplesfrom Tawang inArunachal Pradeshto caves in Kerala are housed in the newly established Bionexus library set up by Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture startupBioprime Agrisolutionson Sinhagad Road. They were sourced from over 300 locations across India.

The collection houses microbes from the sea level to 16,500 ft, from pH 5 to 11, from rainfall regions of 210mm to 11,430 mm, and from -8 degreec C to 70 degrees C covering grasslands, rain forests, lakes, caves, deserts, Glaciers, river basins, hot water, and sulfur springs and mines.

The initiative will unlock the hidden potential of microbial communities residing within Plants and develop products in the form of manure for agriculture to improve productivity and to get rid of pests.

An MPCB-IITKanpur-Bloomberg study has revealed that new low cost pollution or air quality sensors are showing an efficacy of 85% over earlier monitors. MPCB and other experts recommend it could be a good option to make the Mumbai region’s monitoring Network more dense and sensitive to pollution by monitoring additional hotspots. The move, they say, may help the administration take immediate corrective actions to keep air clean.

Twenty low-cost sensors developed by indigenous start-ups have shown an accuracy of nearly 85-90% vis–vis regulatory grade monitors during a seven-month pilot project conducted by the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) in PARTNERSHIP with Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K) and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

These were among a fleet of 40 low-cost sensors developed by four different start-ups and deployed for the study. The findings reveal that sensors from three start-ups saw a Percentage error (measured with respect to true value measured by CAAQMS) of less than 25% for uncalibrated values. After calibration the error was reduced to less than 15% for three types of sensors and 20% for the fourth type.

The study was conducted between November 2020 and May 2021 when 40 low-cost monitoring sensors were installed alongside MPCBs 15 existing continuous (real-time) ambient air quality monitoring stations (CAAQMS) – Colaba, Worli, Sion, Bandra, Vile Parle, Kurla, International Airport, Powai, Kandivali, Mulund, Borivali, Vasai, Mahape, Nerul, Kalyan.

The study was conducted between November 2020 and May 2021 when 40 low-cost monitoring sensors were installed alongside MPCBs 15 existing continuous (real-time) ambient air quality monitoring stations (CAAQMS) – Colaba, Worli, Sion, Bandra, Vile Parle, Kurla, International Airport, Powai, Kandivali, Mulund, Borivali, Vasai, Mahape, Nerul, Kalyan.

The findings of the study have thrown open the possibility of expanding not only Mumbai region but the countrys monitoring network at a fraction of the cost. While regulatory grade monitors could cost upward of Rs 20 lakhs, the start-up built small sensors cost around Rs 60,000.

At a review meeting of the information technology department on Friday, chief ministerEknath Shindedirected officials to immediately implement the mechanism for action on complaints of citizens on Social Media. Officials also said that a comprehensive drone policy is being finalised for the state.

“Citizens are presenting their suggestions and complaints related to the government through various social media. A joint system of our government and the chief minister’s secretariat is being set up by the information technology department to take immediate action on this.

Apart from the traditional methods, citizens are sending suggestions, complaints and statements to the government through email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media. In order to take action on it, it is necessary to send it to the relevant departments, follow up and keep getting information about it. The information technology department is setting up this system with the help of our government team and it should be implemented soon so that the citizens can use it,” CM Shinde said at the meeting.

Film and Televisionindustry members suddenly have a smile on their faces and the reason for it is that after two months of non-Communication, theMaharashtra Governmenthas asked the to share their SOPs with them for approval.

The decision of the vaccination was taken after a joint meeting with FWICE, producers, and broadcasters. But the SOPs post the first lockdown had prevented the senior citizens from all departments from working and coming on set to which Dubey replied there is no such restriction anymore. There is already a court order passed in the case. However, shooting crowd sequences, big song sequences, and crowding on sets will not be allowed. So dancers and junior artists will have to be patient for some more time.

TheMaharashtragovernment has not appointed aState Committee on Dam Safetyas mandated by Dam Safety Act 2021, claimed the activists associated withKrushna Mahapur Nagari Samiti.

The forum has written to the to set up a committee with a chairman and members, mostly officials of various departments, and the Central Water Commission (Cwc).

During the 2021 floods, the meeting between the Maharashtra Irrigation minister and his Karnataka counterpart led to the formation of a high-level coordination committee to share real-time data on dam storage, rains in catchment and free catchment areas, and water levels of rivers.

Deputy chief minister and state finance ministerDevendra Fadnavis tabled the Shinde-led government’s first budget for the year 2023-24 in the Maharashtra assembly.

In his budget speech, Fadnavis said the outlay for farmers has been increased by Rs 6,900 crore and the coverage of the Mahatma Phule Jan Arogya scheme, a Health Insurance scheme of the government, has been raised from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.

Fadnavis started reading out the budgetary allocations in the Lower House of the State Legislature at 2pm.
He read out the budgetary provisions from an iPad instead of a conventional paper document.

This is for the first time that Fadnavis presented the state budget as he holds the finance portfolio.
During Fadnavis’s tenure as the chief minister between 2014-19, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sudhir Mungantiwar was the finance minister. The Shinde-led government, in which his faction of the Shiv Sena and the BJP share power, was formed in June 2022.