State govt mulls cancelling contracts with JSW Ispat and Bhushan Steel
Worried over the tardy progress made by the steel makers, the Jharkhand government is considering to cancel the MoUs it entered with Ispat (now JSW Ispat) and Bhushan Steel for setting up steel projects in the state. In the last couple of years the government has cancelled 27 of its 75 MoUs — the most recent being that of Sesa Goa.

The four-lane work of a crucial National Highway stretch is waiting for a nod from the high-level National Board for Wildlife as it passes through the Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary. Otherwise, the project on the 163.5km highway stretch between Ranchi-Rargaon-Jamshedpur (till Ghatshila) has received clearances from all state departments concerned, including water, forest, road and land.

- Tata township scores on water & power; lags behind in healthcare, roads. Jamshedpur, take a bow. You stand second to Chandigarh among five tier-II cities in the Quality of Life 2012 survey, surging ahead of Bhubaneswar, Pune and Vizag. But the applause will have to be muted, because the steel city that scores high in terms of water and power services lags miserably behind in healthcare and highways, said the survey by AC Nielsen-ORG-MARG survey on behalf of utility major Jusco in Jamshedpur on Wednesday.

Jharkhand High Court on Wednesday directed Tata Steel to prepare an action plan to remove slag from Kharkai and Subernarekha, the rap coming three days before the founder’s day celebrations and after almost a decade of shifting views on the contentious issue of industrial waste poisoning Jamshedpur’s border rivers.

A slag-choked Subernarekha may hope to breathe easy sometime soon. The Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board (JSPCB) — possibly chastised by a CAG report on Jharkhand’s poor conservation of rivers — has served a 15-day deadline to steel wire manufacturer Usha Martin, asking it to state measures taken to check dumping of industrial waste in the river or face closure.

A pair of elephant tusks, weighing approximately 32kg, were recovered late last night from Dalma sanctuary with the help of a sniffer dog and forest officials believe they have scuttled an attempt to smuggle out the ivory valued at Rs 40 lakh in the open market. While the forest department did not think the recovery was a pointer to an established poaching racket in the sanctuary, officials are, however, fairly certain there must have been an attempt to smuggle the tusks since they had been sawed off and later found 4km away from where they had spotted a dead elephant on January 29.

Ranchi, Jan. 15: A first-ever water pollution audit carried out by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has pegged Jharkhand at the bottom of the performance chart with most river conservation projects lying incomplete in the state. According to the report, Performance Audit of Water Pollution in India, the Ganga, Damodar and Subernarekha were selected for pollution abatement projects in Jharkhand under the National River Conservation Programme (NRCP), which was launched in 1995.

24 people working in stone-crushing units die of the disease

Visit the small village of Musabani in Jharkhand and you hear heart-rending stories of people involved in mining.
Situated near National Highway 33 close to Jamshedpur, Musabani drew public attention recently as 24 people died due to silicosis here. The village has been an active mining area with a large number of stone crushers that work for the K.K. Mineral factory and its sister factories.