TAMILNADU

The Nadu government has decided to digitally document loose sculptures and inscriptions that are not within any heritage site or religious places and conserve them in-situ.

A government order will be passed within this month to preserve the loose sculptures including hero stones, Jain, Buddhist sculptures and small inscriptions around the state, said commissioner of archaeology, R Sivanandam.

Around 25 lakh will be allotted every year for In-situ conservation of the sculptures, while 3 crore would be given to digitally record them, said the commissioner.

The Nadu government declaredTamil Thai Vaazhthu,as the State Song.

Tamil Thai Vaazhthu is a prayer song sung in praise of Mother Tamil.

It is a 55-second song and is sung at the beginning of functions across all government offices, educational institutions, Public Sector Undertakings and similar public events, on the line of National Anthem.

The observations on Tamil Thai Vaazhthu song were made by Justice G R Swaminathan in Kan. Ilango v. State case, on December 6. State was represented by Inspector of Police & Another. HC quashed an FIR registered against a group of individuals headed by Kan. Ilango. The group had allegedly entered the Kanchi Mutt branch in Rameswaram in 2018 and raised slogans. They also criminally intimidated the manager of Kanchi mutt.

MBBS students joining college this year will get textbooks inTamilfor the first time. Four textbooks have been translated and will be released before December.

To give better conceptual clarity and understanding for medium students, the Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation (TNTESC) is planning to bring out 25 medical textbooks in Tamil.

Though can students’ study Tamil textbooks, they must write their exams only in English as per the existing regulations.

After two false starts, when the multi-crore BharatNet project had to be scrapped after Corruption allegations, Nadu finally inked a pact marking the take-off of the project touted as info-highway of the future.

On Wednesday, Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corporation Limited (TANFINET) signed the master service agreement for the implementation of the BharatNet Project in Tamil Nadu with System Integrators — M/s L&T (Package C), M/s ITI Ltd (Package D) and Third-Party Agency M/s BECIL — in the presence of T Mano Thangaraj, minister for information technology.

The Rs 1,815-crore project will cover 12,525 village panchayats in Tamil Nadu through optical fibre cable with high-speed bandwidth connectivity. Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corporation Limited (TANFINET), a special purpose vehicle, is implementing the project in Tamil Nadu at a sanctioned cost of Rs 1,815.3 crore. The project aims to provide 1 Gbps bandwidth connectivity to all village panchayats.

There is a need to return to the policy of reservation for classes and not castes, as envisaged in the Constitution and as followed by The Supreme Court to ensure a non-discriminatory policy, aimed to benefit the target sections.

The present DMK-led government has set up a panel to work out ways and means of ensuring social particularly in Education and EMPLOYMENT. But an effort should be made to look at issues and avoid pandering to casteism and vote banks.

In a letter to Modi, a copy of which was released to the media, the chief minister said the state witnessed a huge Growth in terms of area insured and enrolment of farmers due to the best practices adopted by the state under the scheme. However, the states share of the premium subsidy has increased at a compound annual growth rate of 28.7% in the last five years. This has stymied the very purpose of the scheme as the state is finding it difficult to sustain the continuance of the scheme due to increasing financial liability that too during this pandemic period, Stalin said.

Initially, the pattern of sharing in 2016-17 was 49:49:2 (central, state and farmers share respectively). The central share has now been capped at 25% for irrigated area and 30% for rain-fed area, resulting in an increase of the state share of the premium subsidy by 12%. In all, the states share becomes 61%.

The State Industries Promotion Corporation ofTamil Nadu(Sipcot) has earmarked about 125 acres of land at its Manapparai industrial park in Trichy for setting up an aerospace park to promote investments in the sector as well as in DEFENCE manufacturing. Trichy is one of the five nodal cities of the Nadu defence industrial corridor. About 131 acres has also been allotted to Tamil Nadu Small Industries Development Corporation (Sidco) for promoting the Micro, Small and Medium enterprises (MSME) sector.

Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (Tidco) will be the nodal agency for promoting the aerospace park. Meanwhile, Sidco has paid the cost of the 131 acres of land in Manapparai, and the process of making layouts to create industrial plots for MSMEs is progressing. A minimum of 20 cents and a maximum of 1 acre of industrial land will be allocated to individual MSMEs for launching production units. Sidco said that MSMEs in the food and engineering fabrication business will benefit from the new small-scale industrial park. Apart from these allocations and reservations, officials said that a major conglomerate is in talks with Sipcot for booking more than 300 acres of land in Manapparai for an electric vehicle manufacturing unit.

TheTamil Nadugovernment reiterated that it would never allow theKarnatakagovernmentsMekedatudam plan across the riverCauverynear the inter-state border.

The ministers remarks came in the wake of theNational Green Tribunaltaking suo motu cognizance of a report published on April 15, alleging that some steps were being taken and materials had been collected near the proposed project area. The tribunal constituted a four-member committee of the Union Environment ministry, Cauvery Water Management Authority, Cauvery Neeravari Nigam Limited and forest department of Karnataka government to inspect the area in question and submit a factual as well as action taken report, if there was any violation.

The Nadu governments contempt petitions against the project appraisal directorate of Central Water Commission and the secretary of Karnataka Resources“>Water Resources department in December 2018 are pending in The Supreme Court.