UTTARAKHAND

HRDA Secretary Lalit Narayan Mishra said an Oxygen strip has been developed on a 2.5 kilometre stretch from Sinh Dwar to Jatwada on which about 250 treeshave been planted.

These include trees of medicinal and environmental importance like Peepal, banyan, Amla and Neem among others. These trees will not only provide fresh air to the people but also improve the Environment in the city.

All the saplings have been protected with tree guards. Mishra said authority aims to connect progressive youths and volunteers to this initiative. Peepal trees have been given more space on this stretch as this tree lives longer and provides fresh oxygen.

The third Infrastructure Working Group (IWG) meeting under the Indian G20 presidency commenced in Rishikesh. The three-day IWG meeting is being attended by about 63 delegates across G20 member countries, invitee countries and International Organisations.

Two sessions were held on the first day wherein the delegates discussed two work streams under the flagship Financing Cities of Tomorrow: Inclusive, Resilient and Sustainable. The delegates also acknowledged the efforts of the presidency to achieve meaningful progress across the workstreams.

He said that the State faces natural disasters throughout the year. Considering this, the infrastructure should be built in such a manner that it proves useful to the general public even during disaster scenarios. He referred to the frequent Earthquakes in Japan and the technological developments made by that country to minimise damage to the people and their homes during seismic events.

TheIndian Institute of TechnologyinRoorkee(IIT-R) has developed briquettes that can be used for energy generation. These cost-effective briquettes — made fromforest bio residue(like pine needles fallen from trees) — release a very small amount of carbon into the as opposed to other energy sources, according to the premier institution.

These briquettes were developed under a project — titled Socio-Economic Value Creation through Forest Bio Residue Energy Generation in Alignment with the UNs SDGs — led by professors Vinay Sharma and Rajat Agrawal from the institute’s department of management studies. The grant for the pilot project was provided by the National Mission on Himalayan Studies, a central government intervention.

As part of the project, more than 1,000 quintals of pine needles were gathered from around 100 acres of forest land with the help of theUttarakhandforest department. Subsequently, these pine needles were crushed and processed to make briquettes. In addition to manufacturing the briquettes, the institute has also developed a mobile application to streamline the process of buying and selling briquettes.

According to the director of the Women Welfare Directorate, Yogendra Yadav, he has received the data of about 900 children from across the State so far who have been claimed as eligible for MVY.

Yadav said that as per the data provided by the districts, the number of children who lost one of their parents due to Covid-19 is more than those who lost both parents. As per Yadav, there are about 840 children in the State who lost a single parent to Covid while there are 55 children who lost both parents to this disease.

It is pertinent to mention here that the recently announced that under Mukhyamantri Vatsalya Yojana, children who have lost one or both parents, or the sole earning member of their family to the Covid would be provided with free Education, ration and Health facilities besides providing monthly monetary support of Rs 3000 till the age of 21 years.

Erratic weather patterns have been hitting the natural sources of water in forests for years now, forcing wild animals to move out of their natural habitats in search of water. This would often lead to human-animal conflict incidents inUttarakhand.

To address this issue, the state forest department, sometime ago, started a massive drive to arrange artificial water sources for wild animals in the reserved and protected forest areas, includingRajaji Tiger Reserveand Haridwar forest divisions where the cases of human-animal conflict deaths were going up.

This year, the Rajaji Tiger Reserve has recorded just one human-wildlife conflict incident whereas no such case surfaced in the Haridwar forest divisions.

Notably, Uttarakhand is Home to 2,026 elephants, according to an estimation done by the forest department in 2020. A majority of these jumbos are found in the Shivalik Elephant Reserve, which is spread across more than a dozen forest divisions and protected wildlife areas of Uttarakhand.

The findings were part of a five-year field study conducted by the researchers of Kumaun University with the support of Colombo-based International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and co-ordinated by Arizona University. They explored the impact of six micro-power projects, ranging from 0.2MW to 12.6MW, on 11 villages in the region. While three of the Plants were built on the Saryu river, the others are on its tributaries.

According to the researchers, blasting and tunnelling for such projects have ravaged natural water sources that have fed the villages in the region for centuries. They said that this also contributed to loss of Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture and EMPLOYMENT, forcing many to migrate from the area.

The is providing scholarships to 3,900 budding Sports persons under the MukyamantriUdiyaman Khiladi Unnayan Yojana. The government has also decided to reintroduce sports quota in government jobs. Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami stated this on Friday in an event organised by the Sports department at the new multipurpose sports building in Parade Ground, Dehradun.

He also felicitated 168 national level players and 42 coaches who won medals in the year 2021 and 2022 by distributing a total cash prize of Rs 2.08 crore among them. Besides this, Dhami also presented the Uttarakhand Khel Ratna award to Badminton player Lakshya Sen and athlete Chandan Singh for the year 2019-20 and 2020-21 respectively.

The CM also awarded Devbhoomi Uttarakhand Dronacharya Award for 2019-20 to badminton coach Dhirendra Kumar Sen, taekwondo coach Kamlesh Kumar Tiwari and archery coach Sandeep Kumar Duklan for 2021-22. Athlete Suresh Chandra Pandey was also presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his remarkable contribution in the field of sports. Dhami said on the occasion that young players of Uttarakhand are bringing laurels to the state by participating and winning in national and international competitions.

Accepting a proposal of theUttarakhandgovernment, the Centre has permitted the procurement of 9.6 million kg ofmandua(finger millet) in the first list for the crop year 2022-23.

Grown in the hills of Uttarakhand, mandua is a major source of earning for farmers. The minimum support price of mandua is fixed at Rs 3,574 per quintal. Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami termed it a major project, which could prove a “game changer” for the farmers. “We would like to thank the Union Government for accepting the proposal and now it is time our teams worked in coordination to ensure proper procurement of mandua,” he said.

In the first phase, the procurement scheme would be implemented in the mountainous areas of the state on the fixed minimum support price from the farmers of Almora and Pauri districts under the pilot scheme. In the first phase, the purchased mandua would be distributed under the in the districts in the plains — Udham Singh Nagar, Haridwar, Dehradun and Nainital. Around eight lakh families enrolled under the National Food Security Scheme of the above districts would be benefited from the scheme.