KOLKATA, 5 JULY: The Rail India Technical & Economic Services (Rites), a Union government undertaking, will sign an MoU with Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) and KMC on 9 July for beautification of the Hooghly river front, said Miss Mamata Banerjee, railway minister. KoPT will set up a new port at Sagar and rail connectivity with Haldia port and Sagar port will be established, Miss Banerjee said.
BALAGARH, 4 JULY: Hundreds of people in the Balagarh block of Hooghly, whose villages are close to the river Hooghly, have been having sleepless nights ever since the river started eroding its embankments.
KOLKATA, 24 JUNE: The Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) will lift water from the river Hooghly and take it to Rajarhat for purification and supply to action areas I and II on a trial basis from 15 July.
CHINSURAH, 8 JUNE: A day after the country saw the Bhopal gas tragedy verdict being delivered, villagers in Haripal block of Hooghly got quite a scare, after many fell ill, alleging that gas emitted from a local factory, Himadri Chemicals, led to the incident.
A Bangladeshi barge carrying around 60 tonnes of fly ash sank in the Hooghly, near Budge Budge, on Thursday apparently after the engine developed a snag during high tide.
The Anmona-2, which was returning to Bangladesh with fly ash from the CESC plant in Budge Budge, has been tied away from the navigational channel, about 60 feet from the bank.
The Union minister of state for shipping, Mr Mukul Roy, today criticised the state government for failing to utilise funds sanctioned by the Centre to renovate the ghats along the river Hooghly. He said this while inaugurating a ghat renovation project along the Hooghly, at Nimtala ghat.
The Farakka Barrage Project on river Ganga, commissioned in the year 1975, mainly for diversion of 1135 cumec flow of water from river Ganga to river Hoogly through Bhagirathi, for the preservation of Kolkata Port. River Ganga due to its meandering nature is causing bank erosion problems not only in the vicinity of barrage but also in the reaches for upstream and downstream of the barrage.
New Delhi: With Trinamool Congress objecting to any sort of cohabitation with the Left Front government in West Bengal, environment minister Jairam Ramesh has deferred plans to travel to Kolkata for a programme related to the Ganga basin project initiated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
