04-05.06.23

500 new jobs will be created in each constituency: Sikkim CM

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Sikkim Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang announced that his government would create 500 new jobs in each of the 32 assembly constituencies of the state.

Addressing a function Sreebadam in West Sikkim, he said cancer patients in the state will be given medicines free of cost.

Tamang said the state government has also sanctioned the construction of 11,000 houses at a cost of Rs 17.52 lakh each.

He also said that his government has decided to build 108 government schools, equipped with modern facilities.

The chief minister also announced the construction of five playgrounds in each assembly constituency to encourage children to take up sports.

He further said that the honorarium for zilla panchayat and gram panchayats members will be increased soon.


Assam needs to integrate rivers into citys master plan

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Assamneeds to move from making static master plans to strategic master plans for cities considering the rivers or water bodies as focal points in the planning process, director ofthe NationalInstitute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) HiteshVaidyasaid

Speaking at a training programme for urban planners on making river-sensitive master plans, Vaidya said non-strategic master plans have turned the five rivulets in Guwahati into sewage channels. Therefore, there is a need for action-oriented and strategic master plans for the cities so that the rivers can be covered.

It must be mentioned that Guwahati has five important rivulets and all of them are dying due to rapid encroachments and indiscriminate waste disposal. As many as 54 out of the 104 urban local bodies in the state have master plans but all are in the draft stage. Vaidya said, The plans implemented to date remained ineffective for some reasons. The demography as well as geography have changed over the decades. Encroachment and lack of scientifically separate sewage channels have been stumbling blocks.

4 of Odisha in top-100 edu institutions list

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Four educational institutions of Odisha featured in top-100 list of India Rankings 2023.

Union Education Minister (MoS) Dr Rajkumar Ranjan Singh on Monday released the India Rankings Report for 2023 in various categories and domains.

Four institutes from Odisha found place in overall categories of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) this year.

While Bhubaneswar-based Siksha `O` Anusandhan (SOA) University ranked 26th in the list, the city-based Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) University was placed 29th, the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela in 37th rank and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bhubaneswar in 91st rank in Overall NIRF ranking.

Besides, three Odisha educational institutes secured ranks in top-100 University category list of India Rankings 2023. While SOA was positioned 15th in the category, KIIT and Utkal University were the 16th and 93rd best university, respectively, in the country.

The Ministry of Education released the 8th edition of India Rankings for the year 2023 based on ranking parameters identified and defined in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF).

The eighth edition of India Rankings builds upon previous seven annual exercises undertaken between 2016 and 2022 with consolidation, improvements and expansion in terms of additional categories and subject domains added to the ranking exercise, gradual increase in number of institutions that participate in the annual ranking and number of institutions that are being ranked in various categories and subject domains.

9 lakh names cut from TN voter list

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Tamil Naduchief electoral officer Satyabrata Sahoo said that 9,11,820 deletions had been made in the voters list, which was released recently.

Sahoo, in a statement, said the deletions were due to shifting of voters from one place to another, death and duplication of entries. As on Wednesday, the total electors in the state stood at 6,12,36,696 people. Of them, 3,11,09,813 are women voters, 3,01,18,904 are men and 7,979 are third gender.

He said 1,23,064 people were newly included on the electoral rolls. While 51,295 voters changed their addresses, entries were corrected in the case of 2,60,103 electors.

14,000 houses in state to get high-speed internet services

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The state government’s K-FON project aimed at providing high-speed internet connectivity to government offices, educational institutions and economically-weak households will be launched by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

In the initial phase of the project, K-FON will offer internet services to 14,000 households that are financially backward and 30,000 government offices through an optical fibre network. The commercial website of K-FON and the K-FON mobile application will also be launched. During the launch, the chief minister will virtually interact with selected K-FON subscribers, including representations from beneficiary families, residents of tribal hamlets at Panthaladikkunnu in Wayanad, school students and government institutions.

Presently, KFON has been successfully installed in 26,492 government offices, of which 17,354 offices have live internet access. According to K-FON officials, internet connectivity will be made available to all government offices by June-end this year as per the provided list. Currently, K-FON has more than 1,000 household subscribers, and optical fibre cables for providing over 7,000 connections have been laid.

KIMS adopts tech to provide all medical reports online

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KarnatakaInstitute of Medical Sciences (KIMS)Hubballiwill provide X-ray, scanning, and bloodtestreports online for the convenience of patients and doctors. Patients need not visit the X-ray lab, doppler, USG, CT, MRI scans, reports or blood tests for various diseases. All the reports will be provided online.

This new system has been started and has benefited many patients. However, this online service will save up to Rs 1 crore, for which an environment free of paper, x-ray films and plastic will be created.
KIMS Hubballihas introduced Picture Archiving Communication System (Pacs) to store and view patients history. This system will help KIMS go paperless as doctors will get all the information at their fingertips when they enter the patients unique ID number.

Telangana IT exports outstrip national rate, spiral to Rs 2.4 lakh crore

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Amid fears of a global recession,Telanganalogged in its highest ever IT exports, registering a growth of 31.4% in 2022-23. The ‘start-up state’, as Telangana is often called, has far outstripped the 9.36% national IT exports growth rate.

The youngest state’s IT exports grew to Rs 2.41 lakh crore in the financial year 2023, from Rs 1.83 lakh crore in 2021-22, a Rs 57,706 crore jump.

Telangana’s achievement can be gauged from the fact its IT exports growth this year is higher than the state’s entire IT exports in 2014.
And at a time when the tech sector globally is grappling with layoffs, Telangana added as many as 1.27 lakh new IT jobs in 2023 to take the total number of direct IT jobs in the state to more than 9.05 lakh, witnessing a 16.29% growth. The sector employed more than 3.23 lakh people in 2014 in the state.

With this, Telangana’s share of the net new employment in India’s IT sector, which added an estimated 2.9 lakh jobs, rose to 44% in FY23 from 33% in FY22.

Terming the FY23 IT exports growth as “explosive” and the brightest feather in the state’s cap,KTRsaid it proves that Telangana has arrived as the top global IT/ITeS destination.

IIM Vizag tops seven new IIMs

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The Union government set up seven new Indian Institutes of Management in 2015 and 2016. IIMVisakhapatnamtopped among all the seven new IIMs in the management category of the NIRF 2023, the results of which were released on Monday. IIM-V bettered its ranking by four notches by securing 29th place this year compared to 33rd rank in 2022.

IIM-V was rolled out in 2015 with about 50 students in its flagship PGP programme. The institute gave admissions to close to 300 students in PGP programme in 2022. The premier business school recently brought out a start-up and innovation policy.

Goa becoming a plastic sink, state needs to act fast: Ex-WII scientist

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Though Goa is not a source of plastic production, the tourist hotpot is unwittingly becoming a sink for plastic waste, retired scientist of the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, B C Choudhary, said while underscoring the urgency in putting some mechanisms in place to tackle the menace.

The retired scientist said awareness that plastics are not welcome in Goa should begin at places like the airports, with clear and loud messaging for tourists setting foot into Goa.

Goa environment minister Nilesh Cabral said that smaller and smaller items are being wrapped in plastic packaging, which is making it difficult for even ragpickers to pick them.

To empower patients, state to relook Clinical Estab Act

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The state has reinitiated efforts to introduce theClinical Establishments Act(CEA), 2010, aiming to enforce minimum standards for healthcare facilities and provide patients with rights and effective grievance redress mechanisms after several unsuccessful attempts since 2014.
Directorate of Health Services (DHS) has asked all district surgeons, district health officials and municipal corporation heads to hold discussions on CEA and Bombay Nursing Home Act that currently administers medical facilities.

The Act was initially passed in 2010 for Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, and Union territories (excluding Delhi) to establish a framework for overseeing health facilities. Several states later adopted the Act, tailoring it to their specific requirements. InMaharashtra, a serious attempt was made in 2014, but it was put on hold with a change in government. Later, a committee was formed in 2018, but controversy arose due to the lack of representation from civil societies. Discussions to introduce the Act resurfaced during the pandemic but were eventually abandoned.