Amid efforts by the MHA to de-escalate tension along the Assam-Mizoram border, theAssamgovernment on Thursday issued an advisory, asking its people not to travel to the neighbouring state and those working inMizoramto exercise utmost caution.

The commissioner and secretary stated that the travel advisory has been issued after assessing a video footage available withAssam Policewhich shows that many civilians are heavily armed with automatic weapons.

The Indian Railways had sanctioned an electric loco periodical overhauling (POH) workshop at Narla inKalahandidistrict in the budget 2017-18 with an estimated cost of Rs 186.37 crore.But construction work of this project is yet to start. The Railways has received only 141.07 acres out of 328.35 acres of land required so far.

In 2016, the Railways had faced widespread criticism and protest from people of the state for shifting the proposed wagon maintenance workshop in Kalahandi district to Visakhapatnam of Andhra Pradesh. It had invited sharp political reactions from all the parties. Even chief minister Naveen Patnaik had taken up the issue with the then RAILWAY minister to give an alternate project in Kalahandi district.

Later the Centre had sanctioned the electric loco POH workshop in the Union Budget 2017. This is a maintenance workshop for electric engines. It had sanctioned a token amount in 2017 for the beginning of the project. Four years have already passed, but construction work of the project could not start.

An amount of Rs 3.28 crore has been allocated for the project up to the Budget 2021-22, said the reply of the Union minister.

Tamil Naduminister for commercial taxes and registration P Moorthy conducted a review meeting with the registration officials to discuss the avenues to boost revenue through property registrations after the second wave of Covid-19.

Land registrations had been affected for four months during the first wave of Covid-19 last year.

During the meeting, Stress was laid on steps to be taken for increasing the revenue as revival for registration offices was faster than in 2020.

The pandemic year of fiscal 2020-21 recorded revenue to the tune of Rs. 10,643 crore through stamp duty and registration fee between April 2020 and March 2021. The income was less by around 3.6% the corresponding financial year of 2019-2020 when Rs 11,028 crore was generated as revenue.

According to sources, officials were directed to ensure that properties of temples under the jurisdictional control of the Hindu religious and charitable endowments department, water bodies and poramboke land are not being registered underSection 22-Aof the Registration ( Nadu Amendment) Act. TheActfacilitates re-registration of plots, if the earlier land transaction refers to it as ‘house site’. Returning the documents on the same day to arrest any delay, measures to curb staff reporting late to office and progress of the recently launched grievance control room were also reviewed, sources added.

The government is consideringamendmentsinKerala Motor Vehicle rules, making it mandatory for vehicles removingwasteto securepermissionfrom the concernedlocal body, said transport ministerAntony Rajusaid in the assembly.

He said that there are sections in the MV Act, 1988, to take action against such vehicles. As per Section 190 (2), any person who drives or causes or allows to be driven, in any public place a motor vehicle, which violates the standards prescribed in relation to road safety, control of noise and air-pollution, shall be punishable for the first offence with a fine of Rs 1,000 and for any second or subsequent offence with a fine of Rs 2,000. The minister said that there are also provisions for suspending the licence of such vehicles.

Raju said that though the permits for goods carriage are provided under Section 79 of the Act, it does not specifically talk about vehicles carrying waste.

As many as 1,26,245 children (3 to 6 years) living in rural areas and 8,718 kids (6 to 18 years) in urban localities are not attending school, the high court was informed.

Senior advocate KN Phanindra, who is assisting the as amicus curiae in a suo motuPILon the issue, said 91% of households in rural areas and 79% in Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) have been covered under the door-to-door survey till June 2021. This apart, 9,716 children in rural areas and 4,842 in ULBs have never enrolled in school.

The exercise for identifying out-of-school children is stipulated under rule 6 (1) of the Karnataka Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Rules, 2012.

The amicus curiae said so far, 80,59,221 of 88,55,659 families in rural areas have been covered and 32,14,257 out of 34,55,656 children were found to be going to school. In the ULBs, 25,65,309 out of 32,43,590 families (based on properties) have been covered and 9,25,820 children in the age group of 6 to 18 attend classes.

It was the Hyderabad state archaeology department, under the supervision of eminent archaeologist-conservationist Ghulam Yazdani, that first took up renovation of the historicRamappa templein 1914.

Yazdani, who conserved the Ajanta and Ellora cave paintings for posterity, renovated the dilapidated Ramappa temple and it is his conservation efforts that have now fetched the world heritage tag to the Kakatiyan temple of the 13th century.

Yazdani was one of the founders of the archaeology department in the erstwhile Nizam state. The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in its report to the online extended 44th session of the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO, which is currently on at Fuzhou in China, specifically makes a reference to the conservation of the temple complex by the Nizam government to state that the condition of the temple is now in a satisfactory state.

The central government has nominatedAndhra Pradeshas member ofTask Force for National Digital Tourism Mission(NDTM) constituted by theMinistry of Tourism.

The task force has been formed for the augmentation of digitalization in the tourism sector and to enhance opportunities for tourism enterprises to expand their market reach, Growth, operational efficiencies and to sharpen their competitive edge.

The objective of setting up of task force is to identify key challenges and opportunities for digitalization in travel, hotels, catering and other service sectors co-related with tourism, also to create awareness on digitalization of tourism amid sub sectors.

While parts of westernMaharashtraandKonkanare facing floods due to heavy rains, the water level in various dams of theMarathwadaregion has dipped as compared to this time last year, as per the irrigation department. The total water storage capacity of 45 big reservoirs in the region is 4,505.36 million cubic meters (MCM).

It further said 81 medium reservoirs in the Marathwada region had 247.84 MCM water on Monday as against their total storage capacity of 1,056.42 MCM. Their storage as of now is 23.46 per cent as compared to 30.19 per cent last year, the report said.