Raju Gusain
Mail Today, Dehradun, June 26, 2010

Uttarakhand may be the perfect getaway for those wanting to escape the scorching summer.

But the state’s chief minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, is feeling the heat even in the cool climes of the hill state.

He is under the scanner for allegedly changing the land use of a 15- acre industrial plot worth Rs 400 crore and handing it over to a real estate developer close to the ruling BJP for a paltry Rs 13 crore. In addition to this, the chief minister is understood to have waived the land- use change fee. [more]

Shishir Prashant / Business Standard / Dehra Dun June 25, 2010, 0:45 IST

After not finding favours in his home state, Uttarakhand Agriculture Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has now decided to discuss the concept of Special Agriculture Zones (SAZs) with the Centre.

With the state government showing little enthusiasm to declare the new agriculture policy, Rawat has now decided to send a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh detailing about the benefits of SAZ, which was conceptualised to protect farmlands and achieving food security. The Uttarakhand agriculture and horticulture departments are implementing SAZ as a pilot project in three blocks —- Raipur in Dehra Dun district, Pokhra in Pauri and Kotabagh in Nainital. [more]

D S Kunwar, TNN, Jun 17, 2010

DEHRADUN: Rampant quarrying along rivers — in wilful violation of Supreme Court directives in 2009 — is threatening Uttarakhand’s fragile ecosystem. After the SC directive, the Union environment ministry had set conditions for all states before quarrying along riversides, which included permission for doing so from the ministry. The Uttarakhand government sought permission in June 2009 from the environment ministry, was denied, and so took the issue to the SC. The SC referred the matter to the Uttarakhand HC, which is yet to pronounce a judgement but has imposed a stay on all quarrying. [more]

Kumkum Dasgupta, Hindustan Times
June 17, 2010

Politicians love photo-ops. So I wasn’t very surprised to see Uttarakhand’s Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal take a dip in the Ganga during the Maha Kumbh and then hold a Cabinet meeting on its banks. He apparently wanted to raise awareness about Ganga pollution and demand a ‘world heritage’ tag for the national river.

But at Srinagar, a small town on the banks of the Alaknanda in Pauri Garhwal district, Uttarakhand, Pokhriyal’s dip hardly created a ripple. Many see his concern for the river as a sham as they feel Uttarakhand’s dam-building spree on the Bhagirathi, Alaknanda and Ganga will eventually ‘kill’ the nation’s lifeline. The Bhagirathi and Alaknanda meet at Devprayag to form the Ganga. According to a 2009 government list, 558 dams are under construction or being surveyed in the state.

Their fears and concerns have been corroborated by a recent Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report. Yet to be placed in the Assembly, the report is severely critical of the bumper-to-bumper dams and state that large stretches of the river will dry up if these hydroelectric power projects (HEP) are built. The issue has become controversial. The CM’s protocol officer Ajay Bisht told me, “I can set up an interview with CM-saab if you want to discuss the Kumbh Mela. But he won’t talk about the HEPs.” The CM considers the ‘successful completion’ of this year’s Mela a feather in his cap. [more]

Daily Pioneer, June 11, 2010
Paritosh Kimothi | Dehradun

Though climatic change is associated more with the fast-melting glaciers in the Himalayas, some of the high-altitude alpine meadows or bugyals of Uttarakhand also seem to have been affected by the global climatic changes. A study being conducted by the Forest Research Institute (FRI) in collaboration with Space Application Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad, has found that the famous Bedini Bugyal in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve is being encroached upon by different tree species resulting in the timber line extending to a higher altitude. Though the cause of this alteration is still in the process of being validated scientifically, climatic change appears to be the most likely reason for the extension of the timber line to a higher altitude and into the bugyal. [more]

Reuters BANGHAT, Thu Jun 3, 2010 1:50pm IST

Conserving an endangered fish in Uttarakhand’s Ramganga river has proved to be not only environmentally rewarding but also an economic saviour to villages along the banks of the river.

The Golden Mahseer in the Ramganga, which flows through the Jim Corbett National Park, became endangered to the point of extinction due to illegal fishing and the use of explosives to kill and catch fish. [more]

Press Trust of India, Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 0027 hrs IST

Dehradun: Uttarakhand is likely to pass the much-awaited Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act, setting the stage for private companies like RIL and ITC to get into contract farming in the state and set up private mandis.

Uttarakhand agriculture minister, Trivendra Singh Rawat on Friday said chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank has agreed to give the final nod to the proposal at the next Cabinet meeting. The move follows the green signal being given by a sub-committee of the state Cabinet, which approved the draft bill for the APMC Act. A four-member expert team of agriculturists, which toured states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka to study the impact of the APMC Act there, also gave its approval. [more]

Neena Sharma
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, May 24
A target of upper caste hegemony, economically weak craftsmen and artistes of Uttarakhand are facing the worst form of discrimination. Not only are they debarred from entering temples, casteist slurs are heaped on them regularly and they are even denied water from village source, a basic human right.

Be it the sanskar ceremony, the opening of temple portals in Uttarakhand or social movements, drum beaters or aujis are summoned without fail to perform customary rituals. It is aujis who have kept alive the culture of musical instruments for centuries and it is their hands that have chiselled many statutes of gods and goddesses that adorn temples in hills. Ironically, they are denied entry in several temples in Uttarakhand and have to travel several kilometres to quench their thirst. [more]

Tribune News Services

Pitthoragarh, May 18
After rain evaded the Kumaon region for more than a week, the water crisis in the region has deepened as traditional water sources that fulfil the maximum drinking water requirement of the region have gone dry.

“In dozens of villages of Tarikhet and Dwarahat blocks of Almora district, villagers have to wait for long hours at the traditional water sources only to obtain 20 to 30 litres of water,” said Pratap Singh Negi, a social worker in the Tarikhet block of Almora district.

According to Negi, villagers have now started water rationing in more than a dozen villages in Tarikhet and a same number of villages in Dwarahat block.

In the Someswar area of Almora district, villagers depend on drinking water schemes drawn from distant jungles where most original sources have dried up.

“Villagers in remote villages in the Someswar area are now rationing water from traditional sources,” said Puran Singh Adhikari, another social worker from the area. [more]

Rajeev Khanna
Tribune News Service

Nainital, May 16
The political establishment in Uttarakhand came in for heavy criticism from a group of intellectuals, social activists and people from other streams who had come together to analyse where the dream of having an “own ideal state” had evaporated. The group had got together to discuss the present socio-political and socio-economic scenario in the state and what needs to be done to put things on the right track.

The participants were almost unanimous in their opinion that political parties and successive governments in the state have let down people and have not done anything to turn their aspirations into a ground reality. [more]