Gangtok: Sikkim is pushing its tourism envelope with a combination of nature and spirituality to preserve the essence of its Himalayan heritage and make a statement of sustainable growth in this age of manic concretization of the fragile hill environment.

Sample this: Laid out across 23 acres of lush slopes against a startling backdrop of the icy Kanchenjunga and the Maenam hills range in southern Sikkim’s Rabongla district shines the State’s newest tourism address – the Tathagata Tsal or the Buddha Park, nearly 65 km from Gangtok.

Gangtok, Feb 25: Greener, bigger, fresher and more wholesome than elsewhere in the country – that’s how vegetables appear here, in the manicured Saramsa Gardens, the venue of the Sikkim Internation

The Cabinet will take up the proposal for a National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) on Thursday. It will cater to the 37.7 crore urban population and will be a sub-mission of an overarching National Health Mission (NHM) for urban and rural areas.

In a potentially contentious proposal and a shift from NRHM, where public health facilities are the sole service providers, NUHM is proposed to have provisions for public-private partnerships to fill infrastructure gaps.

The Central government has sanctioned a grant of Rs 1.89 crore for the modernisation and construction of fish landing centres in the state reservoirs under the scheme of the National Fisheries Development Board, Hyderabad.

Forest Minister Thakur Singh Bharmouri, who also holds the portfolio of fisheries, said here today that the state was concentrating on maintaining the quality of fish in state reservoirs to benefit those involved in the avocation.

Days ahead of the first meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Investment ( CCI), the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC), the statutory body for advising on forest clearances, rushed to clear a little over 20 projects, including those in mining and power.

The CCI, set up to hasten big-ticket infrastructure projects, had its first meeting on January 31. According to sources, as many as 30 projects came for hearing before the seven-member FAC on January 21-22. Of the seven members, only three were present.

To avoid accidents on upcoming Sevoke-Rangpo line

To get started a project that has been hanging for four years now for want of environment and forest clearance, the Railways have decided to install sensors to track the pachyderms present on or near rail tracks. The Railway Ministry has sought a detailed report on the feasibility of the project in order to get approval for the construction of the first rail link to Sikkim which is estimated to cost Rs.1,340 crore.

Within days of China announcing three new hydroelectric projects on the Brahmaputra river and catching India by surprise, the Centre has set the ball rolling to build the strategic Tawang hydroelectric project in Arunachal Pradesh.

The 800-MW power project proposed to be built on the Tawang Chu river has got forest clearance, with the Environment Ministry waiving the cumulative impact assessment for stage-I clearance that it was earlier insisting.

GANGTOK: Sikkim is the second–smallest State in India in terms of area after Goa. It is also the least populated in the country with just 6,00,000 people. Yet, in some matters, this Himalayan State towers over others, leading the way where the rest of India falters.

Among the most innovative schemes undertaken in this State is the Comprehensive Annual and Total Check–up for Healthy (CATCH) Sikkim. This programme is aimed at tracking the health status of people in the State, so prevention, rather than cure, can become the order of the day when it comes to public health.