New Delhi: Union agriculture ministry has declared 17 districts of Gujarat consisting 132 talukas as drought-affected.

In a reply to Rajya Sabha MP Parimal Nathwani, union minister of water resources Harish Ravat stated that the districts include Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, Amreli, Anand, Banaskantha, Bharuch, Bhavnagar, Gandhinagar, Junagadh, Kheda, Kutch, Mehsana, Patan, Porbandar, Rajkot, Surendranagar and Vadodara. The minister also stated that, water being a state subject, planning, and execution and funding of water resources projects was within the purview of respective state governments.

The Union Government has declared 17 districts in Gujarat as drought-affected, Rajya Sabha MP Parimal Nathwani has said.

Vadodara/Anand: Amul is all set to reach Mumbaikars’ doorsteps with one of its most modern dairy plant at Virar. “This will be the first dairy plant with fully automatic traffic management system using robots for milk packing. It will be inaugurated next month,” Amul Dairy’s managing director Rahul Kumar told TOI.

It has many firsts in India including a 50,000 litres milk reception, processing, automatic online standardization and homogenization line and dedicated fermented milk products manufacturing facilities. The Virar facility will be Amul’s sixth plant in India.

Gandhinagar: In a systematic blow to high accolades Gujarat received from the Centre over the “net increase in the mangrove cover”, reports from Jambusar in Bharuch in south Gujarat suggest that things may now be moving in the opposite direction. The reports point to the coastal areas in Gulf of Khambhat where the Gujarat Ecology Commission (GEC) and NGOs jointly developed dense mangroves plantations.

The government has received a complaint from a civil society activist, who happens to be a member of the state-sponsored Gujarat Coastal Zone Management Authority, that heavy mangroves plantation is in the danger of being wiped out.

MUMBAI: Admitting for the first time that genetically modified (GM)cotton may havehad an adverse impact on the state's farming community, the Maharashtra government has ordered a socio-economic stu

Unregulated fertility clinics indulge in medical malpractices, including physical and economical exploitation of women, a study has shown. Shockingly, preference for male children and demand for ‘same caste’ surrogates are prevalent in India.

“Some couples, say about 5 per cent, who come to my clinic demand surrogates from their own caste,” says Nayna Patel, of the Akanksha Fertility Clinic in Anand, Gujarat that has come up as a major centre for surrogacy in India.

VADODARA: Your morning cup of tea would not fire up your sleepy senses without a little milk in it, and yet a debate has been stirred up on what should be India's national drink - tea or milk.

On Saturday, deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia announced in Jorhat, the tea capital of India, that tea will be given that place of pride by April next year.

Anand: The first phase of National Dairy Plan (NDP), the ambitious scheme to double India’s milk production, was launched at the headquarters of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) in the country’s milk capital here on Thursday.

Launched as ‘Mission Milk’, NDP proposes to usher in country’s second White Revolution. Since 1998, India has already emerged as world’s largest milk producer.

A 600 MW solar power park, touted as Asia's first and largest, was on Thursday dedicated to the nation by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the state's Patan district, in a boost to India's efforts towards low carbon growth.

The solar power park with a power generation capacity of 600 MW, covering approximately 3,000 acres of wasteland bordering the Rann of Kutch, will generate two-thirds of India's total 900 MW of solar power production.