AHMEDABAD: Sensing the vagaries of nature with rains getting scanty this year in Ahmedabad, officials of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) are chalking out a contingency plan to keep potable water woes away from the city.

In the past, Ahmedabad had witnessed water riots over the scarcity of drinking water. To start with, AMC is now constructing 100 percolation wells at AMC premises in six different municipal zones of the civic body within a year.

GANDHINAGAR: Four years after it was launched, the state government has got a "post-feasibility study" of the controversial Sujalam Sufalam project prepared to silence its critics. Prepared jointly by the Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore and Water Resources Engineering and Management Institute (WREMI), Vadodara, it comes even as a Planning Commission document on the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12) refuses to include it in the list of projects it has approved.

AHMEDABAD: The state government has resolved to free the state from child labour by 2010 and has prepared a state action plan towards this goal.

As part of this project, a three-day training programme

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat is often referred to as the

GANDHINAGAR: Faced with sparse rainfall, the Gujarat government has decided to wait for another week, in the hope that the flagging monsoon would revive during this period, before taking a call on declaring the state drought-hit. A special meeting held by agriculture minister Dilip Sanghani observed that there was "nothing to worry about delay in rains as of now'. However, if the monsoon remains elusive for another week, an action plan to fight an impending drought will be announced.

AHMEDABAD: In a major relief to the Adani group, the Supreme Court on Wednesday vacated the stay order that stalled work at its Rs 7,400-crore multi-product special economic zone at Mundra. A bench headed by chief justice KG Balakrishnan, while dismissing the petition of fishermen as withdrawn, asked the Adani group not to fill the creeks.

This should not surprise many Amdavadis but a recent intra-state passenger traffic study for 2.18 lakh vehicles revealed that a major portion of the commuters travel between Ahmedabad and Rajkot-Saurashtra region. The study was conducted as part of the ambitious Rs 1,100-crore Ahmedabad-Rajkot Access Controlled Corridor.

Himanshu Kaushik | TNN Gandhinagar: Worried about the extreme conditions of droughts and high rainfall in state over the last decade, the Gujarat government has decided to conduct a study on "climate variability and climate change-disaster risk'. According to the proposal, the rainfall data over the last century indicates that the annual pattern is dominated by both extremities of rainfall, especially in northern and western part of the state. In South Gujarat, extremely high rainfall and resultant floods are quite common.

Radha Sharma | TNN Ahmedabad: Now farmers in Gujarat will get a twice-a-week update on the weather forecast of their district so that they can plan in advance on whether they should irrigate, wait for rains or cultivate the standing crops in time to protect themselves from crop damage. This service has been made possible by a tie-up between the agriculture and the weather department to give forecasts that are useful at the micro-level and help the farmers maximize gains and minimize damages due to fast-changing climate conditions.

Ahmedabad: In the final run for winning the contract for the operations and maintenance of Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) services, EURO-3 diesel run buses have taken the lead. The bids quoted by the five main operators are in range of Rs 34-Rs 36 per kilometre for EURO-3 diesel bu s e s which is the most economical option available to the Ahmedabad Janmarg Limited(AJL).