Order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the matter of Bhisham Kinger Vs State of Punjab & Others dated 13/05/2025. The matter is related to deteriorating medical infrastructure in Punjab, especially Malerkotla district. An affidavit filed before the court showed that certain vacancies of doctors at Malerkotla have …
WATER-LOGGING in northern India has caused massive decline in the area under cotton cultivation. The production of cotton in Punjab and Haryana has been the worst affected, said the North India Cotton Association. But the area under cotton in the Gangangar tracts in Rajasthan has not shrunk. According to estimates, …
Yields from the rice-wheat cropping system in the Indo-Gangetic plain are declining despite the increasing use of chemical fertilizers. Crop residues are important components of soil fertility management, but are burnt in some areas such as Punjab state. Not only does this mean a loss of nutrients but also causes …
The Punjab government has ordered a probe into a series of suicides by small and marginal farmers and landless workers in Sangrur district of the state. This decision was taken by Punjab chief minister Prakash Singh Badal after a Chandigarh-based human rights group, Movement Against State Repression (MASR), found that …
the newly-elected Punjab chief minister Prakash Singh Badal's move to provide free irrigation water and electricity to farmers will only harm the economy and the environment, without helping those it is meant to. Anything that comes cheap is overused or misused. Farmers must learn to use irrigation water effectively or …
THE paper industry of Punjab has shown utter disregard for environmental concerns by openly flouting the rules regarding discharge of waste and effluents. And the state pollution control board has taken no action to check this offensive on environment. The paper mills like Sukhna at Derabassi and Shreyans at Ahmednagar, …
IN A dozen villages in the Khem Karan sector (Amritsar district), bordering Pakistan, August 5 was a day of festivity. That day the villagers had completed a kind of dream project: a 2-km-long anti-flood bund on the Sutlej with their own labour. "We have done in 4 months whht the …
• The Indian Council of Agricultural Research will 'set up 500 new centres through institution-village linkage for transferring technology to farmers. This was stated recently by P Das, deputy director-general (extension) of ICAR at Solan, Himachal Pradesh. • Inaugurating the 34th annual meeting of the Cement Manufacturers' Association at New …
NO entry for agni (fire) here. This was the message the villagers of Patial, in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district, had for the fire-ravaged hills of neighbouring Himachal and Uttar Pradesh. Its very own fire brigade, tempered by decades of fire prevention rather than fighting, ensured that the Patial forests remained unscathed. …
Jagir Singh Patiali, 65, is the undisputed leader of the village community in Patial. Although he never held any official post, he has taken up a number of local issues, and spearheaded the forest protection system. Jagir still holds out with hope. What is the force behind this cooperation in …
The Punjab state government will be constituting a Punjab Gujjar Welfare Advisory Board, says chief minister Beant Singh. The newly-elected Maharashtra government said that it would review Enron's Dabhol power project not to be cleared "at the cost of the people". The National Hydro Power Corp (NHPC) plans to promote …
The Asian Junior Rowing Championships at Chandigarh, held from November 24 to 27, took a cruel toll of trees. The organisers found that the heavy inflow of silt and seepage of water from the lake posed problems for rowing. Three draglines were requisitioned from the Punjab government's irrigation and drainage …
Windmills installed by the Union ministry of non-conventional energy in the Amritsar district of Punjab to pump water for irrigation have turned a last dance. According to G S Dhillon of the Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology at Amritsar, who recently evaluated the windmills and presented his report to …
ABOHAR Wildlife Sanctuary in Punjab is not your average preserve. The 18,700 ha sanctuary - situated 15 km from Abohar town in Ferozepur district - is spread over 13 villages and is one of only two private reserves in India. The other is the Abubshahar sanctuary in Haryana. And, there …
In February, the third blackbuck census was carried out in Abohar Wildlife Sanctuary in Punjab. The first two censuses were held in 1978 and 1986. Says chief wildlife warden of Punjab, Gurmit Singh, "The state government sanctioned the Rs 25,000 we had applied for, so we decided to carry it …
Amritsar has been plunged into an acute shortage of blood. Three major blood banks, which are the main suppliers to the hospitals and clinics in the city, were sealed by the district administration on February 16 on a complaint that a person tested HIV positive after receiving blood. Inderjeet Singh, …
A NUCLEAR plant in Punjab could be on the cards if chief minister Beant Singh has his way. Singh has prevailed upon the managing director of pig the Nuclear Power Corp (NPC), S K Chatterjee, to conduct a feasibility study to locate a nuclear power plant in the state, in …
The "greatest scientific fraud of the century", attributed to an Indian geologist, was in the spotlight once again recently in an article published in the scientific journal, Nature. The findings of Vishwa Jit Gupta of the department of geology at Punjab University in Chandigarh, which contributed to the scientific database …
In a significant breakthrough, the Hyderabad-based Directorate of Rice Research has developed five commercially viable, hybrid rice varieties from indigenous species. Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) director-general V L Chopra claims this will make India "the second country, after China, to exploit hybrid vigour in order to give a …
While the cultivation of paddy in Punjab (and Haryana) does need some curbing, the extreme forebodings of either total groundwater exhaustion in Punjab or of the state turning into a desert of paddy growing is not curbed forthwith are unwarranted.
A dry winter followed by the highest temperatures recorded in February in the north Indian plains in the past six decades led to fears in state agricultural departments that rabi crop yields would be cut drastically. Wheat, gram, pea, barley and mustard - the traditional winter crops grown in Punjab, …
