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The Star Cement Limited which is operating from Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya is in the news, this time precisely for wrong reason. The company which is extracting 9 lakh tons of limestone annually is proposing to raise it to 25 lakh tons per year. For this purpose a public hearing was conducted by Meghalaya State Pollution Control Board and East Jaintia Hills Administrators in collaboration with Star Cement which was opposed by the Village, Headman and school children. Floating all the rules, the public hearing was held at campus of Star Cement at Lumshnong where it was difficult for the people to raise their concern about environmental degradation with such large scale extraction of limestone.

It may be noted that in Jaintia Hills, there are large number of caves which took thousands of years to form are already destroyed by various cement companies because of its location at the close proximity to caves in the region.

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Mystery has thrill. Mystery has attraction. And so is the case with Kalinjar Fort in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh. After a lot of hearsay from people of various walks of life, I along with my wife decided to visit this unique fort. ‘Unique’ because the fort has not only a thrilling battle history, but is related also with the mythological story of ‘Samudra manthan’ (churning of the sea) and drinking of poison, so produced due to ‘Samudra manthan’, by Shiva. This place was also one of the very important sacred places of worship and meditation by ‘Kaul- Kapalik’ sect of tantric rituals in medieval period of our history.

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Governor assure student of setting up centre

Governor Tathagata Roy assured to take necessary action into the demand for setting up of National Eligibility Test (NET) examination centres in Meghalaya for the interest and welfare of post graduate students.

The assurance was made before a delegation of the North Eastern Hill University Students’ Union (NEHUSU) led by its President Genuica Majaw who met the Governor at the Raj Bhavan here requesting for his intervention into the matter.

Majaw told reporters that the decision to approach the governor, who is also the Visitor of the University, was after the state government has delay in taking any step to address the grievances faced by the students’ community in the state. She said the Union had met the chief minister Conrad K Sangma on February 19 earlier this year for his intervention into the need to set up of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-NET) and University Grants Commission (UGC-NET) centres in the state.

Unlike other states, she said the state for the past many years has no CSIR-NET centre except only one UGC-NET centre at Qualapaty, Shillong which cannot cater to the need of students who are aspiring to appear for such examination, especially after it was made a computerized test.

At present, students who wanted to appear for the CSIR-NET exams have to go to Guwahati in the absence of such centre in the state. This has created a lot of problem in term of travelling expenses and stress to find the location of the centre, Majaw added.

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Since its attainment of full fledged statehood, Arunachal Pradesh is all set to go to polls for the first time with a non Congress ruling government in the state. The state will have simultaneous polls for both the assembly and parliament in the first phase on 11 April. While the electorates will elect the sixty legislators to the seventh legislative assembly, for parliament it will be for only two members. Apart from the two main national parties and the state's lone regional party People's Party of Arunachal, this election has witnessed the entrance of the National People's Party for one, which of late have been hitting the right notes, while the others include the Janata Dal (Secular), Janata Dal (United), the All India Party and All India Forward Block. The Nationalist People's Party and Trinamool Congress which had put up candidates in the 2014 elections have drawn a blank this time around.

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With the rising of global water consumption, pressure is mounting on water. It is stated that demand for water has grown annually by 2.4 percent globally. So, our lone human habitable planet has already felt the pinch of water crisis and it has emerged a serious challenge.  According to reports by the United Nations, two-third of the world’s population will face acute water shortage by 2025, affecting lives and livelihoods of 1.8 billion people. The UN World Water Assessment Programme, 7 billion people in 60 countries may cope with water scarcity by 2050.  The much-talked-about climate change, which is instrumental in altering the weather pattern, can make the matter worse.

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Meghalaya team left for Santosh Trophy

The Meghalaya football team will leave for Ludhiana, Punjab to take part in the Santosh Trophy final round, which will begin on 8th April and run until 21st April. The Meghalaya team will once again be led by experienced coach Khlain Pyrkhat Syiemlieh. The team was bid farewell by Meghalaya Football Association Senior Cell Committee member L. Darlong who encourage the players to “grab their opportunity”. Meghalaya have been drawn with Odisha, Goa, Delhi and Services in Group A of the final round. Meghalaya will first play Delhi on 8th April, followed by Odisha on 10^th April, Services on 14^th and Goa 16^th April.

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Though this is an old thing continuing since decades, the infiltrators now have become so emboldened that they have started setting up their own villages and often oust local people by force from there. The recent development of the migrants setting up 16 villages at Lunglei district in South Mizoram has alerted both the state government and the Centre.  

Of the nine villages, four are in Aizawl district followed by three in Champhai and two in Mamit. The Mizo Students’ Union (MSU), has asked the state government to raze it within this month. The gravity of this issue of creating villages by Bangladeshi infiltrators can be gauged from the fact that the Legislative Assembly of Mizoram was told that there exists 25 illegal villages across the state.

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This is for the first time in the electoral history of Tripura when ruling party faced decadence and hit badly by an internal squabble among the leaders that led to massive violence during Loksabha elections in the state. The BJP and Congress fielded fresh candidates in West Tripura general seat and East Tripura tribal reserved constituency against the sitting MPs and veteran politicians. Most interestingly BJP’s ally in the government Indigenous Peoples’ Front of Tripura (IPFT) has put their independent candidates in Loksabha seats against BJP and others. The East Tripura candidate of IPFT is the President of the party and Revenue and Fishery Minister of Biplab Kumar Deb cabinet N C Debbarma and in West, Tripura sitting MLA of the party Brishketu Debbaram becomes a candidate. The BJP fielded their most aspirant female leader and party general secretary Pratima Bhowmik from West Tripura and a school teacher and greenhorn in politics Rebati Tripura.