PALAKKAD: Subash Palekar, an advocate of natural farming popularly known as

KOCHI: The All-Kerala River Protection Council has demanded the Constitution of River Protection Authority to save the rivers and water resources in the state where different lobbies were engaged in activities causing harm to most of the rivers.

The council alleged that most of the rivers in the state were being misused by the agents of building industry, sand mafia and river encroachers.

KOLLAM: Kerala Congress (B) chairman R Balakrishna Pillai has called upon the State Government to follow the West Bengal model in allotting Special Economic Zones in the state.

Speaking at a news conference here on Friday, he said the LDF Government could follow the criteria adopted by their West Bengal counterparts in allotting the SEZs. Instead of allotting thousand acre, the state should allot small holdings up to 50 or 100 acres for setting up SEZs, he said.

G. Prabhakaran

PALAKKAD: Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan has accused the Tamil Nadu government of trying to avoid the renewal of the inter-State Parambikulam-Aliyar Project (PAP) agreement even after its expiry in 1988.

The Chief Minister has said he will take up the matter with the Tamil Nadu government.

PALAKKAD: The grama panchayats in various districts of the state which execute afforestation and soil and water conservation schemes in an exemplary manner by including it under the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme (NREGS) will be given awards, according to Finance Minister Thomas Isaac.

The award money will be announced in the next budget. He was speaking after inaugurating the

V.R. Krishna Iyer

It is strange to learn that Kerala has no plan to generate power through alternative means.

THRISSUR: Instead of decentralised arrangements for the treatment and processing of waste by Local Self-help Groups in each district, a centralised processing arrangement for a few districts or for each district was mooted by Thrissur District Collector V K Baby.

He presented the idea at the meeting of Thrissur Mayor, Chairmen and Secretaries of municipalities and concerned officials held at the Collectorate here the other day.

The participants welcomed the idea. The Collector said that the preliminary sorting of the waste should be done at the generating points.

Two species of trees, earlier considered extinct, rediscovered botanists have re-discovered two critically endangered tree species, earlier considered to be extinct. The trees that originated in southern Kerala have been discovered for the first time in some of the relic primeval evergreen forests of Uttara Kannada district in the Western Ghats. Researchers from Indian Institute of Science,

cpi mla rajaji m thomas proposed a resolution in the Kerala assembly against the Centre