Environment Minister S Shivanna has said that an experts’ meeting will be convened soon to discuss measures the Environment Department or Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) can take up to contain adverse effects of radiation of cellphone towers.

The Minister, in a statement issued here, said a meeting of officials of the departments of health, medical education, urban development, telecommunications, the KSPCB, Visvesvaraya Technological University and Indian Institute of Science will be held in a week’s time. This would help in preparing a legislation to check the health hazards caused by cellphone tower radiation.

JAIPUR: The Rajasthan high court on Friday took a strong note of the Union telecom secretary's letter directing the state chief secretary not to order removal of mobile phone towers from hospitals.

As the high court had earlier ordered that the towers be instantly removed from the school and hospital buildings, the division bench headed by chief justice Arun Kumar Mishra said the Union secretary's letter was tantamount to contempt of court.

The High Court directed the Atomic Energy Commission to measure the intensity and biological effect of radiation emitted from the country's cell phone towers.

Timelines Soon as Ministries Fail to Act on Reforms
Only three ministries set targets for implementing recommendations of the Ashok Chawla Committee on Allocation of Natural Resources

Points to power, infra issues, graft scams, higher investor uncertainty

The World Bank on Wednesday cut India's economic growth projection to six per cent for the current financial year from the earlier 6.9 per cent estimate, blaming the slowdown on corruption scandals and a host of policy issues, including uncertainty in tax policies. However, the Bank expects that the reform measures announced by India recently will push growth in the second half of the current financial year, albeit slowly.

JAIPUR: The Rajasthan high court has given the state government till October 12 to remove all mobile towers from schools.

New Delhi Brace for another dose of price hikes. A high-level committee on Wednesday recommended a slew of measures to encourage investments in the infrastructure sector, including hikes in electricity, gas prices and rail fares besides deregulation of port tariffs.

While the rationalisation behind the suggestion is to make the respective businesses remunerative, the committee has also pitched for other measures such as hiking the FDI limit in the telecom sector from 74% to 100%, removal of regulatory uncertainties and easier M&A rules to ease flow of funds into the sector.

AHMEDABAD: With the harmful effects of mobile tower microwave radiations becoming a concern in major cities, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) over the past week has been feverishly counting the number of cell towers installed in the city-and looking for their proximity to schools, residential areas and hospitals.

The AMC , the Cellular Operators Association of India (CAOI) and an agency, Indus towers, are toying with the idea of introducing cellular street furniture-which are high masts that will be installed along main streets at close proximity, to cut down on radiation intensity.