JODHPUR: Union Textile and Commerce & Industry minister Anand Sharma on Saturday, while expressing concern over the closed textile units, announced to set up a high level committee to look into the damages caused by the textile industry to the local environment and ecology at Jodhpur, Barmer and Pali.

Headed by secretary, textile, the committee will work out economically viable technical solutions to get over the situation

Rajasthan will soon accord the bio-diversity rich Jawai Bandh forests in Pali district the status of a conservation reserve. The rich forests and the water bodies along the Jawai dam in Sumerpur tehsil have a large presence of crocodiles. The wildlife census in 2011 had put their number at 288.

Jaipur: Former environment minister Maneka Gandhi visited Jaitpur area in the Pali district on Sunday as she was invited by the farmers to take up the issue of Bandi river, which is getting polluted by industrial waste and making agricultural land infertile.

Gandhi inspected the area and said those responsible for polluting the river should not be spared and that stringent action be taken against them. “Pollution cannot go on in the name of industrialization,” she said.

JAIPUR: After Project Tiger, it is now project panther to conserve the animal in the state. In a bid to protect the panther population, the state forest department has embarked on a mission, Project Panther, in an area covering about 600 hectares on the periphery of the Kumbhalgarh sanctuary in Pali district.

A survey conducted across nine states by the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and Allahabad University suggests that the much maligned system has revived, prodded by politics, good governance and the apex court. It also found the poor to be averse to cash transfers

Rajasthan Agriculture Minister Harjiram Burdak flagged off the first-ever consignment of certified organic food to be exported from Rajasthan to the United States here on Thursday. The organic food comprises mainly conventional pulses for which there is a heavy demand in the U.S. They were produced from the processing unit of the Morarka Organic Foods in Sitapura Industrial Area near here.

“Just like Green Revolution”

Taking serious note of acute water crisis gripping the state, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot today held a high-level meeting and directed the officials to immediately prepare an emergency plan to cater to irrigation and potable water needs of the state