PUNJAB

The state Education department has formed the State Centre for Literacy (SCL) cell to impartlegal, financial, and digital literacy to adults who have not received formal education in any school. The union education ministry had formulated the project in 2021 with the objective to promote adult education and lifelong Learning. The project under the goals designated in New Education Policy 2020 will run till 2027 with an aim to cover all targeted adults.

The cell becomes critical in states with the poorest literacy rate of below 50% among Women in the country.

TheRajasthanState Council for Education Research and Training (RSCERT) based in Udaipur has started preparing contents for under the targeted areas in local areas. Also, the focus of the content is to integrate it with technology tools such as digital platforms, mobile apps, IT etc to have easy access.

The Punjab government launched a mobile app, Beej, for farmers so that they gain information on whether the seeds they buy are approved.

The need for this arose after growers in the state suffered huge losses by buying unapproved seeds.

The application will have information about sale of seeds, rate of seeds and veracity of seeds.

In a bid to relieve the transport sector from financial losses suffered due to a lockdown imposed during the second wave of Covid-19, the Cabinet has approved exemption from the Motor Vehicle Tax to contract carriage vehicles (up to 16 seater), buses of religious organisations and stage carriage buses (up to 35 seater).

With these decisions, the existing rates will be reduced from Rs 30,000 to Rs 20,000 per bus per year for all types of stage carriage buses (up to 35 seats, private/STUs) and to withdraw 5 per cent annual increase in the rate of Motor Vehicle Tax. Besides, it will give exemption from the Motor Vehicle Tax to contract carriages up to 16 seater from May 20, 2020 to December 31, 2020 and buses of religious places from March 23, 2020 to December 31, 2020.

The Cabinet has also decided to reduce 10 per cent Simple Interest and 3 per cent penal interest on outstanding dues of developers such as of the EDC to 8.5 per cent compounded annually in urban development authorities. Besides, the Cabinet also decided to drop normal and penal rates of interest to 7.5 per cent compounded annually and 10 per cent compounded annually in future for new as well as ongoing projects.

Punjab , Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development Minister Laljit Singh Bhullar on Sunday urged the states farmers to adopt fish farming as auxiliary occupation of the Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture to increase their income.

Bhulllar, on the eve of World Fisheries Day, said that the Government was providing a 40 percent subsidy for adopting fish farming, and the farmers should derive maximum benefit of the scheme.

Extending greetings to the fish and shrimp farmers, he reiterated that the Punjab Government was committed to provide all possible assistance for adopting fish farming as a profession. The State Government is making continuous progress in the field of FisheriesSpecial emphasis is being laid on development of Infrastructure for fish farming and increasing fish production in the state, he added.

He informed that a total 43,691 acres in Punjab is under fisheries, from where 1,89,647 tonnes of fishes are being produced. Shrimp farming is being done in zero-income land affected by waterlogging and saline water in Punjab, which proved to be successful in increasing the income of the farmers. At present, a total area of 1200 acres is under shrimp cultivation.

The Minister said that 15 government fish seed farms are operational in Punjab to provide quality fingerling to the farmers, while new government fish seed farm was being developed at Killianwali village in Fazilka district. Besides, a wholesale-cum-retail government fish market is operational at Ludhiana for clean Marketing of fish and another new fish market is under construction at Patiala, which will be operational soon.

Rural development panchayat ministerKuldeep Singh Dhaliwal claimed that around 26300 acres of cultivable Shamlat land worth Rs 9200 crore, which is not owned by the panchayats, has been identified.

As part of the special campaign to get rid of illegal possessions and identify the Shamlat lands of the villages a special Shamlat cell was set up to carry out the exercise.

The department is thoroughly examining all the records of the revenue department related to Shamlat lands across the state and so far the work of comparing the records with the revenue department record has been completed for 86 out of 153 blocks.

Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi on Thursday digitally launched the Inter-State Basmati Movement portal emandikaran-pb.in in order to stop influx of paddy-parmal from outside that is hampering procurement operations on MSP across the State.

The move is aimed to allow free movement of Basmati into the State and alleviate any hardship being faced by genuine Basmati Rice Shellers besides GPS monitoring of Basmati Trucks would help the state to identify the genuine operators without impacting their daily operations.

The Portal will show the GPS enabled movement of Basmati Trucks in the State.

With Punjab headed towards by 2037, the only way to conserve water is by agricultural zoning of the state and by metering groundwater.

These are the major recommendations of the special Vidhan Sabha committee, which submitted a report to Speaker Rana KP Singh here today, suggesting that a policy on groundwater extraction and recharge be brought out.

With Irrigation for Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture being the major source of groundwater depletion, the committee has now recommended that the state be divided into agricultural zones, with certain arid or dry areas being brought under Horticulture crops (in Kandi area) and under Cotton (in South Malwa), with at least 7.50 lakh hectares under the white gold.

Various studies have shown that 17 per cent of tubewells are now dug as deep as 600-650 metre as water is not available in the first 300 metre of the aquifer. Thus, there is urgent need to reassess the use of groundwater and take immediate steps to prevent the desertification of Punjab, which is expected in next 25 years if the groundwater extraction continues at the current rate

No lessons seem to have been learnt from the floods of 1988 and 1993 as the well-oiled nexus of corrupt politicians, Irrigation officials and contractors keeps on failing people of the state.

It seems Punjab is once again witnessing the situation similar to September 1988 and July 1993, when 9,221.2 sq km (18.3% area) and 9,757.4 sq km (19.4% area), respectively, was inundated in the state. The studies done post 1993 floods had pointed out non-maintenance of drains as the main cause of the floods.

In 1988, flashfloods affected a maximum area of 2,054 sq km in Ferozepur district followed by Hoshiarpur and Kapurthala districts

In 1993, floods affected an area of 1,000 sq km area in Fatehgarh Sahib District. This was followed by Patiala and Gurdaspur districts

The studies done post 1993 floods had pointed out non-maintenance of drains as the main cause of the floods

According to the Statistical Abstract of Punjab, the state has over 400 drains with a total length of over 11,000 km which cover an area of around 50,000 km.