All that was discussed in the House through the day
The Government of India had issued a standard operating procedure for the rehabilitation of tigers, Babul Supriyo, minister of state in the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change told the Rajya Sabha March 15, 2021.
The procedure, released by the National Tiger Conservation Authority, divided the entire country into clusters within the five overarching landscapes, based on conservation genetics.
Tigers can be rehabilitated between these clusters for re-introduction and other conservation translocations, depending upon their density.
Supriyo said active management of the tiger population had been successful at the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, Panna, Sanjay-Dubri, Satpura Tiger Reserves and Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh and the Rajaji Tiger Reserve in Uttarakhand.
Decrease in jobs
Santosh Kumar Gangwar, minister of state (independent charge) for labour and employment denied in the Lok Sabha that there had been an unprecedented decrease of nine million jobs in India during the last three years.
Instead, the estimated Worker Population Ratio for the persons aged 15 years and above on usual status (principal status + subsidiary status) basis increased to 47.3 per cent in 2018-19 on an all-India level, from 46.8 per cent in 2017-18.
This was according to the results of the Periodic Labour Force Survey conducted by the National Statistical Office under the Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation during 2017-18 and 2018-19, Gangwar said.
Road accidents
Nitin Gadkari, Union minister of road transport and highways denied in the Rajya Sabha that the number of road accidents had increased in India during the last few years.
The total number of road accidents in 2019 was 449,002 compared to 467,044 in 2018, Gadkari told the house.
Gadkari also said his ministry had formulated a multi-pronged strategy to address the issue of road safety based on education, engineering (both of roads and vehicles), enforcement and emergency care.
Water management
Most of the rain water in India went to the sea due to the inadequate water management system in place in the country, Rattan Lal Kataria, minister of state for Jal Shakti admitted in the Rajya Sabha.
Kataria said state-wise details of rain water saved during the last three years had not been maintained.
Safe drinking water
There was no proposal under consideration to declare access to safe drinking water as a fundamental right at the moment, Rattan Lal Kataria, told the Rajya Sabha.
The Government of India, in partnership with the states, was implementing the Jal Jeevan Mission to enable every rural household in the country to have assured potable tap water by 2024, Kataria said.
Chhattisgarh drinking water
The Government of Chhattisgarh had reported 153 habitations with fluoride contamination beyond permissible limits in ground water as on January 31, 2021, Kataria told the Rajya Sabha. No habitation was reported to have arsenic contamination, he added.
Some 14,413 villages out of out of 19,698, had been provided piped water supply as on March 9, 2021, Kataria said.
Clean water
Some 79.27 per cent of rural habitations in India, having 78.22 per cent of the country’s population had a provision of minimum 40 litre per capita per day (lpcd) of potable drinking water, Kataria told the Rajya Sabha.
Another 17.86 per cent of rural habitations having 19.25 per cent of the population, had a service level of less than 40 lpcd potable water. The remaining 2.86 per cent of rural habitations having 2.52 per cent of the population, had ground water sources that had quality issues, Kataria said.
Sewage infrastructure
Water supply coverage was 64 per cent and sewer coverage was only 31 per cent at the inception of the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) scheme in 500 cities, Kataria told the Rajya Sabha.
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