NORTH-EASTERN STATES

TheTripuragovernment has signed an agreement with Asian (ADB) amounting to Rs 2,275 crore to strengthen and improve power distribution efficiency in the northeastern state, deputy chief ministerJishnu Dev Varmasaid.
Terming the agreement as historic for the state,Dev Varmasaid it is the single biggest project in any plan through an externally aided project.

Of the Rs 2,275 crore fund, the Centre will repay Rs 1,820 crore while the state is supposed to provide Rs 455 crore, he said, adding the project will be implemented in the next three years.

The government can extend its helping hand only when the members come forward with doable solutions, Jallan said. He said the major issues faced by the during 2021 were shortages of coal and urea, besides challenges like Climate-change”>Climate Change, low land and labour productivity, demand-supply imbalance, low per capita tea consumption, frequent power cuts and natural gas supply to only 50 per cent factories out of about 800 units.

The annual requirement of urea for the tea plantations of Assam, including big and small growers, across the Brahmaputra and Barak valleys is 1,13,200 metric tonnes.

The Government of India and Asian (ADB) signed a $4.5 million project readiness financing (PRF) loan on 26 October.

Highlights

The loan agreement will support project preparation and design activities to develop urban flux in the capital city, Aizawl, in Mizoram.
PRF encourages the development of long-term resolutions for developing urban mobility by recognizing high-priority urban transport investments in Aizawl.
It will help in the next project and enhance its readiness by extending due diligence and preparatory activities.
Aizawl is the centre of the administrative and service Industry of Mizoram. Urban mobility in Aizawl is severely constrained because of rapid and unplanned Urbanization.
This led to traffic congestion on narrow road widths as it impacts road safety, movement efficiency of people & goods, and environmental sustainability.
This project is crucial as it seeks to resolve the transport problems in the city by adopting sustainable urban mobility solutions.

Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP)

A Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP) will be developed for Aizawl, outlining the urban transport development strategy.
It also helps in building synergies with urban development planning initiatives.
The plan further promotes Climate & disaster resilience as well as gender inclusiveness in its interventions.
The PRF loan will help in conducting feasibility studies to prioritize projects that are identified in the CMP.
It will prepare detailed project reports and detailed designs for the project.

and Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) will launch the first edition of the North Eastern Region District Sustainable Development (NERDSD) Goal Index Report and Dashboard 2021-22 on the August 26, 2021.

This will be first of its kind region-wide district SDG index in India.

Launch of NERDSD goal index report is also a milestone in the efforts towards localising Sustainable Development Goals across 120 Districts of the north-eastern states of India namely Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Nagaland and Tripura.

This index has been prepared by collaborative efforts of NITI Aayog and DoNER Ministry.

It has been prepared on the basis of NITI Aayogs SDG India Index.

An in a music system may power the journey of a carpet-weaving centre in Arunachal Pradesh from gloom to a GI (geographical indication) boom.

Floor and wall carpets have been the unique selling point for the Choephelling Cooperative Society since it was established in 1975 by Tibetan refugees on the outskirts of Miao, a subdivisional headquarters in Changlang district.

But productivity slumped after more than four decades and the society was finding it hard to replace the ageing weavers with younger, faster ones. Reasons: the carpet unit and its wooden looms were falling apart and a poor lighting system was affecting the eyesight of the weavers.

The game changer was a music system worth 68,000. It plays a range of Tibetan and popular songs, often in sync with the movement of the weavers hands and fingers.

Indian Medical Association (IMA)Mizoramstate branch attributed the lowrecovery rateofCovid-19infected people in Mizoram to thestate government’s refusal to change the Covid-19 discharge protocol. Mizoram’s recovery rate was 78.21% as against 96.80% in India.

IMA’s Mizoram state branch president Dr Rosangluaia said that the IMA, Mizoram state branch had repeatedly asked the to change the discharge protocol, but the government has stuck to its guns.

There is not a single data which indicated that those who were discharged after ten days, not having symptoms for 3 days, spread the coronavirus, he said.
The irony in Mizoram is that the state government, without consulting medical experts, used to make decisions on the pressure from outside agency.

In the next one month, all states will get at least one Vande Bharat train connectivity, except the seven states in the North East where the RAILWAY Network has not been electrified 100%. Sources said with faster roll out of such semi-high speed trains, more cities will get the Vande Bharat trains.
So far these trains have covered 21 states and UTs. Officials said the next three trains will start soon on New Jalpaiguri-Guwahati, Ranchi-Patna and Mumbai-Goa routes. Currently, 17 such trains are operational. One train is under trial, another has been dispatched from the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) and one more spare rake is available in Delhi region, said

Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb launched a 24×7 Education channel, which will offer lessons to school students, in line with the NCERT syllabus, and help them “make up for the lost Learning time” amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Deb, during his address following the launch of ‘Vande Tripura’, said this is the first such initiative by his government to ensure that students do not miss out on their lessons for an extended period of time.

Education minister Ratan Lal Nath, on his part, said, his department launched an innovative scheme — Notun Disha (new direction) which is aimed at assessing and boosting the academic prowess of elementary school students, but the pandemic has brought everything to a halt.

The department of telecom (DoT) has detected about 1.52 lakh dubious connections based on fake/forged documents involving many points of sale (PoS) of different telecom service providers (TSPs) in six states of the northeast LSA Arunachal, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland & Tripura, an official statement said.

More than 1.47 lakh mobile connections that failed in the re-verification process have been disconnected by TSPs in the region. So far, TSPs have blacklisted 493 PoS and registered 71 Police complaints against the suspected points of sale for further investigation.