As on December 14, 2022, 42.1 million hospital admissions worth Rs 49,468.6 crore have been authorised under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri-Jan Arogya Yojana, Bharati Pravin Pawar, Union minister of state in for health and family welfare, mentioned in the Rajya Sabha.
This contributes to directly reduce the out-of-pocket health expenditure of the public, the minister added.
India’s camel population declined to 252,000 in 2019 from from 400,000 in 2012, according to the livestock census, Parshottam Rupala, Union minister for fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying, told the Lok Sabha.
An amount of Rs 1,000 crore has been allocated for the development of electric vehicle charging infrastructure under phase-II of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India (FAME-India) scheme, Krishan Pal Gurjar, Union minister of state for heavy industries, said in the Lok Sabha.
The Ministry has also sanctioned 2,877 electric vehicle charging stations in 68 cities across 25 states / Union territories, he said.
Further, 1,576 charging stations across nine expressways and 16 highways have also been sanctioned under the scheme, the minister added.
An area of 7.2 million hectares has been covered under micro-irrigation in India through the Per Drop More Crop (PDMC) scheme, Narendra Singh Tomar, Union minister for agriculture and farmers’ welfare, told the Lok Sabha.
PDMC was implemented in the country from 2015-16 as a component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana from 2015-16 to 2021-22, Tomar noted.
From 2022-23, PDMC is being implemented under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, he added.
The global market for organic produce has been growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.7 per cent over the last six years (2014-2020), Tomar said.
In value terms, the market size has grown to $132 billion in 2020 from $80 billion in 2014, the minister told the Lok Sabha.
He was citing a report published this year by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement, Germany and Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Switzerland.
According to the fourth advance estimates for the agricultural year 2021-22 (July-June), the production of wheat is estimated at 106.84 million tonnes, indicating a dip of 2.75 million tonnes from the estimates for 2020-21, Tomar told the Lok Sabha.
This reduction in wheat production is due to the impact of heatwaves in March 2022 in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, the minister noted.
India has installed 166.36 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity as on November 30, 2022, RK Singh, Union minister for power and new & renewable energy, told the Rajya Sabha.
This includes 61.97 GW solar power, 41.89 GW wind power, 10.73 GW bio-power, 4.92 GW small hydro power and 46.85 GW large hydro power, he shared.
The additions were in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement at the 26th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of achieving 500 GW of installed power capacity from non-fossil sources by 2030, the minister added.
The Department of Biotechnology and Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council, under Mission Covid Suraksha, supported Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Limited for scale up and phase II / III clinical trial of ‘GEMCOVAC™-19’, India’s first mRNA vaccine against Covid-19, Pawar told the Rajya Sabha.
This vaccine has also received market authorisation from the Drugs Controller General of India, Pawar added.
As many as 20 Indian Council of Medical Research-network laboratories have been operationalised across India for testing monkeypox disease, Bharati Pravin Pawar, Union minister of state for health and family welfare, told the Rajya Sabha.
The global trajectory of monkeypox has been showing a declining trend since mid-August 2022, although the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern July 23, 2022, she added.
A total of 3,075 cases and 13 deaths due to measles have been reported from Maharashtra as on December 12, 2022. Few other states have also reported measles cases this year, Pawar told the Rajya Sabha.