The Planning Commission on Tuesday approved a 16 per cent hike in the central plan outlay to West Bengal to arrive at a figure of Rs 25,910 crore for this fiscal, which was what chief minister Mama

In an unusual reference to farmers, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his inaugural speech at the India Water Week on Tuesday, said: “Groundwater sources of drinking water often fail due to competition over the same aquifer between public drinking water systems and private irrigation.”

“Private irrigation” is a new term coined by the government as it is moving towards bringing strict laws to price irrigation water as well as control ground water.

In a move which may open a Pandora’s box for the Centre, West Bengal chief minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has sought coal at a special subsidised rate for local consumption from the Planning Commission. Ms Banerjee told Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia that since 80 per cent of coal is sourced from West Bengal, the state should be given the mineral at a special subsidised rate.

Sources said that the Planning Commission members were taken aback by the demand of the temperamental West Bengal chief minister, as the move if at all considered could lead to similar demands from other coal mining states like Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

Against the backdrop of a Supreme Court direction asking the Centre to constitute a committee for rivers inter-linking, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia today said before inter-basin transfer of water a variety of issues needed to be settled first.

While hoping that the proposed committee under the Water Resources Ministry will strive hard to work on the issue, he said various technical, environmental and economic issues need to be addressed for proposed inter-linking.

Keeping in mind the limitations on increasing water supply, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday said that a large part of effort to plug the demand-supply gap must focus on increasing water use efficiency.

“There is no regulation of ground water extraction and no coordination among competing uses. Inadequate and sub-optimal pricing of both power and water is promoting the misuse of groundwater. We need to move to a situation where groundwater can be treated as a common property resource,” he said while inaugurating the first National Water Week.

AHMEDABAD: A fund for public health should be created by levying specific taxes on tobacco, alcohol, petrol and junk foods, believes Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) faculty Dileep Mavalankar.

"Taxes should also be levied on any food item that has more than 10% sugar or fat and has high salt content and accrued to the fund for public health," said Mavalankar in response to a proposal of increasing public expenditure on health suggested by High Level Expert Group (HLEG) appointed by National Planning Commission. He was speaking at a function here organized by India Health Progress on Monday.

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has asked Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal to enlist private mine developers expeditiously to explore Coal India Limited’s (CIL) mines thr

Amid fractious relations between the Congress and Trinamool Congress, the Centre is likely to approve West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s demand for an increased annual plan outlay for her

Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has written to Union Water Resources Minister P. K. Bansal to fast track the Renuka Dam project. The Chief Minister has expressed concern that further stalling of the project will jeopardise the city's water security. The dam has been proposed on the Giri River in Himachal Pradesh and is expected to provide Delhi 275 million gallons of water a day.

Delhi has been pressing the Centre for its intervention to secure clearances for the Renuka Dam project, claiming it is the only source of water for the city's future use. “There are limited sources of water for the city; and Renuka Dam is the primary source that assures water for the future needs.

It is back to the 1970s as far as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is concerned. The job guarantee scheme is set to provide food grain as part of wages. The rural development ministry, which found its NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) allocations squeezed in the Budget, has approached the food ministry with a proposal to provide food for work under the scheme.

The scheme, which guarantees 100 days of work on demand to any rural citizen, had a budget of about Rs 40,000 crore till last year. It found its allocation almost halved in this year’s Budget.