Interim report by board could not identify the source of around one-fifth of Calcutta’s PM2.5 pollution Environmentalists have raised questions about an ongoing study ordered by the state pollution
CPM leaders in the Darjeeling hills continue to be at the receiving end of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha's anger, K.B. Wattar from Bijanbari being the latest in the line of fire. Morcha supporters have been demonstrating in front of Wattar's house since yesterday, demanding that he either quit the CPM, which is against a separate state, or leave the hills. "The Morcha harps on democracy, but at the same time its members intimidate our leaders in the hills,' Bengal urban development minister and CPM MLA Asok Bhattacharya said here today.
Old, polluting vehicles are on their way out Transport minister Subhas Chakraborty on Monday expressed surprise at the high court order to phase out 15-year-old commercial vehicles but added his government would implement the directive.
JAYANTA BASU The environment department will be drafting a package of incentives to make the city's transport lobby fall in line with its clean-air notification that the high court converted into a verdict last Friday. Transport unions have threatened to contest the order in the Supreme Court, saying they would need substantial financial support to obey it.
ANSHUMAN PHADIKAR An East Midnapore school still under water. Picture by Jahangir Badsa Tamluk, July 20: More than a month after the floods in East Midnapore, some two lakh people are homeless and over 350 schools shut because they are serving as relief camps. "Hundreds of villages are still under water,' said district relief officer Srikrishna Maity. Unless the water recedes, the government won't be able to assess the damage and fix compensation. If the water has receded in some villages, the houses are unfit to live in.
Scores of trees are being felled in Calcutta every month to make way for billboards, according to the West Bengal forest department. Last week, four full-grown trees
India and Bangladesh have signed a pact in New Delhi on July 17 agreeing not to prevent each other from carrying out anti-erosion work along the border in malda district. The district magistrate of Malda, Chittaranjan Das, said huge plots of Indian land on the border were eroded by the river. "The problem is particularly bad in areas like Old Malda, Habibpur and Bamungola where the border fencing and pillars have gone missing with the Mahananda eating into its banks.'
The papad factory owned by Sudhir Agarwala at Soharoi near Raiganj. (Nantu Dey) Raiganj, July 17: At least 80 entrepreneurs who had invested crores of rupees to set up small and medium scale industrial units in Raiganj are facing double blows. First, the investors could not start production even two years after they had opened the factories as the government-run power distribution company has not given connections. Second, banks have sent notices to these industrialists warning them that further defaults on the payment of installments would result in their property being impounded.
Gautam Chakraborty, head of the previous board Malda, July 17: Development work by the zilla parishad here has come to a halt over the past five months and is likely to be delayed for another two, as the previous Congress-led board could not pass the budget earlier this year.
A child enjoys his journey back home from school through a waterlogged street in north Calcutta. Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha Showers lashed the city on Wednesday, with the Met office recording the season's second highest rainfall so far. Calcutta received 51.4 mm of rainfall in 24 hours, till 8.30pm on Wednesday. The Met office warned of isolated heavy rainfall in Calcutta and its adjacent areas in the next 24 hours.
If driving past the Ruby rotary on the EM Bypass during peak hours leaves you on the edge, the good news is that you won't have a bad time on that road every day for the rest of your life. The Bypass will be expanded from two to four lanes from the rotary to Kamalgazi, on the southern fringes, during Phase III of a project that seeks to make up for the city planners' lack of foresight when the speed corridor was conceived.
