Gandhinagar: Closely following the draft Gujarat Water Policy 2011 sent to the chief minister’s office (CMO) for finalization, a fresh high-level document, prepared for the Planning Commission of India, has proposed major water reforms in rural Gujarat.

This document proposes introducing availability of water 24x7 through water meters at the individual household level. Suggesting that this can be done on a pilot basis in 50 selected villages in the first year of the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17), the document says other villages can follow “based on results and response of the community towards water usage.”

Gandhinagar: Gujarat government may have to go in for major changes in the state’s land-related laws which are currently being applied for regularizing land titles – in case it wants to apply the new impact fee law, passed in the state assembly in September 2011 for legalizing illegal structures constructed on plots of land without necessary clearances. Top Sachivalaya sources said this is particularly crucial as of 15-lakh-odd illegal structures, which the law seeks to regularize, two-thirds are land related.

Gandhinagar: Water woes in the Petroleum Chemical and Petrochemical Investment Region (PCPIR), an important industrial hotspot along Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, may come to an end soon.
The PCPIR, coming up over 480 sq km in the Dahej-Bharuch region, will get a two-km-long weir off the mouth of Narmada river at Bharbhut, next to the Gulf of Khambhat, for storing sweet water coming from Narmada dam.