MAHARASHTRA

Besides the appointment of a leading lawyer, the set up a two-member committee comprising higher and technical Education minister Chandrakant Dada Patil and excise minister Shamburaj Desai to monitor the on-going litigation before theSupreme Courton theMaharashtra-Karnataka border dispute.

The decision was taken at the first meeting of the high-level committee headed by chief minister Eknath Shinde to resolve the border dispute between the two states. Besides Shinde, the meeting was attended by deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan. NCP president Sharad Pawar and leader of opposition Ajit Pawar did not attend the meeting though both are members.

TheNashikunit of theMaharashtra Pollution Control Board(MPCB) has directed the industries to use either CNG or LPG for operating the furnaces.

So far, only five units have started using green fuel for operating the furnaces that were earlier run on oil. The order is part of the measures undertaken by the MPCB to improve the air quality in industrial areas.

The Maharashtra government has spent more than Rs 330 crore on purchasing electricity from the open market to bridge the demand-supply gap caused by coal shortage.

Energy minister Nitin Raut on Tuesday said the state is facing a shortfall of 3,500-4,000MW of electricity, and blamed the mismanagement and a lack of planning on the part of central Psu Coal India Ltd for it.

At present, the state needs 17,500-18,000MW of electricity, and with the soaring October heat, the requirement may go up to 20,000MW. Officials said state-owned power Plants have maximum two days stock and its likely that government may have to go in for load-shedding in some areas if supply doesnt stabilise.

IIT-Bombay launched its Project Udaan on the occasion of Hindi Diwas on September 14, 2021.

Project Udaan was launched with the aim of breaking the language barrier that many students face while joining the institutes of higher Education.

Project Udaan enables the translation of textbooks and other study material of the engineering and other streams from English to Hindi & other Indian Languages. This project was envisaged by Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan from Department of Computer Science & Engineering in IIT Bombay. It is a donation based and -based translation ecosystem. It helps in translating engineering textbooks and Learning materials in one-sixth the time as compared to manual tasking. This machine translation will be aided by human effort.

The has set up a committee under the secretary (housing) to give a fresh impetus to redevelopment of stalled slum rehabilitation projects.

A new scheme to restart stalled projects had been announced by the government in May last year. In response to the new scheme, 31 proposals were received from developers by theSlum Rehabilitation Authority, said a Government Resolution issued on Wednesday.
The SRA empanelled these developers based on their financial Health and has divided them into three categories. Developers who have completed 10 lakh square feet of construction which is RERA registered in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and whose projects have received occupancy certificate have been marked in the A category. Those in categories B and C were required to have completed 5 lakh sq ft and 2.5 lakh sq ft of construction registered with RERA.

Even as tigers are crying for space and better wildlife management in the areas surrounding the reserves, the is sitting over proposals to hand over administrative (unified) control of Bor and Navegaon-Nagzira Tiger Reserve (NNTR) to the wildlife wing.

Notifying the buffer zone around Tiger Reserves is mandatory under the Tiger Conservation Plan (TCP) after amendments to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, on September 4, 2006.

The 661 sqkm buffer zone of Bor and 1,241 sqkm of NNTR was notified in December 2015 and September 2016 respectively but even after 5-6 years, it has not been brought under the unified control of tiger reserves. Buffer zones of Melghat, Pench and Tadoba have been under the administrative control of the tiger reserve.

The has come out with the latest GR sanctioning Rs 372 crore from Road Safety Fund to set up 20 automated vehicle fitness testing centres referred to as inspection and certification (I&C) centres at various locations acrossMaharashtraincluding Navi Mumbai, Vasai and Pen.

A few months back, a decision was taken to set up 24 centres including the ones at Tardeo RTO in Mumbai and in Thane, Kalyan and Panvel and tenders were floated. On Tuesday, state transport commissionerVivekBhimanwar said that a total 44 such fitness testing centres will now come up across Maharashtra in less than a year.

The centres will ensure commercial vehicles like autorickshaws, Kaali Peeli taxis, aggregator cabs likeOlaand Uber, school buses, tourist buses and trucks/tempos plying on city roads meet standard requirements for safe driving and emission parameters. IT will check 23 parameters including tyres and indicators with the latest technology, sources said, adding that it will check whether vehicles are ‘road worthy’ and do not pollute the Environment. At present, the fitness tests are conducted manually.

An analysis of negative rapid antigen tests (RAT) that came positive when retested withRT-PCRhas proved that RAT missed up to 33.7% cases. The finding assumes significance since RAT accounts for more than 60% of the dailyCovid-19 testsin the state, being preferred for its ease of use and shorter turnaround time.

The study was based on field data from tests conducted at Icmr-National Institute of Research in Reproductive Health (NIRRH) between July 7 and August 7, 2020.

The institute studied its own Database of 412 antigen negative reports that were retested with RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction), the gold standard test to detect coronavirus. It found that the repeat RT-PCR could pick up 139 positives (33.7%) that were missed by antigen.

The state is carrying out an Average of 2.4 lakh tests of which around 1.3 lakh are antigen tests and the rest are RT-PCR tests.

ith the new phase of Covid vaccination for those above 45 years beginning on Thursday, the state aims to cover 33.8 million citizens of Maharashtra.

The number of potential beneficiaries rose to 33.8 million from 17.7 million after the addition of all citizens above 45 years. The state authorities said the new beneficiaries will be accommodated at the existing 3,000-plus centres.

Of the 33.8 million Population over 45 years, about 4.5 million have already been inoculated as part of the categories taken on priority after vaccination kicked off on January 16.

Maharashtra has inoculated 5,296,000 beneficiaries with first dose till March 30,while 733,000 of them have been given their second shots too. The state now aims at inoculating more than 300,000 beneficiaries a day.

The is expected to get an additional supply of 2,627,000 doses on Thursday. Until March 23, the state has received 76,01,500 doses from the Central government.

Mumbai tops the chart of vaccine beneficiaries with 1,126,000 beneficiaries (including second dose), followed by Pune (747,000), Thane (453,000) and Nagpur (360,000).

The Economic Survey has revealed that 512 factories were closed in 2022. On the other hand, Average daily EMPLOYMENT increased in the same period. In 2021, there were 36,848 factories which reduced to 36,312 in 2022.

In a few sectors however, average daily employment has reduced. In consumer goods, employment reduced from 13,565 to 6,777. In reconstruction goods, it decreased from 6,850 to 6,010. Only in , it jumped from 2,858 to 3,537. The reduction in numbers was primarily due to the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to experts.