Bihar has set out to match Mumbai with its own version of the Marine Drive. The 21.5km Ganga Path, coming up in Patna by June 2015, will be one of the country’s biggest public-private-partnership projects at an estimated cost of Rs 2,234.46 crore. The Bihar State Road Development Corporation will in November finalise one of six leading construction companies that it has shortlisted. The government has signed a deal with Transparency International to ensure transparency in the bidding process.

With only about 2,000 Gangetic river dolphins left in India, down from tens of thousands just a few decades ago, the Bihar government is planning to set up Asia's first research centre to strengthen conservation efforts to save the endangered mammal.

An official in the chief minister's office said the Gangetic dolphin research centre would be set up in Patna, where dozens of dolphins can still be seen in the stretch of the river near the state capital.

The police has registered a case against former chief of Bihar BJP Gopal Narayan Singh for illegal mining in the forest areas of Rohtas district. Singh has been charged with illegitimate quarrying and under various sections of the Explosives Act as the police recovered a large quantity of explosives and detonators from his office during the raid in the Muffasil area of Sasaram on Sunday.

In an unprecedented move, the Bihar Government has decided to involve farmers in preparing the agriculture road map of the state for the next 10 years.
As per the decision of the Cabinet, the views of experienced and expert farmers would be incorporated in the roadmap, which is to be debated in the state legislature during the ensuing budget session.

“The state government is committed to implement the next roadmap on agriculture from April 1,” said Agriculture Production Commissioner Ashok Kumar Sinha.

The tiger has traversed 300 km from the Valmiki Tiger Reserve (VTR) to reach this island covered by tall grasses and with plenty of neelgai and wild pigs for prey.
The matter of concern for the state government, as it is for the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), is that this majestic animal should not stray into a heavily populated village where there is a strong likelihood of the animal coming to harm.

The recent 6.9-magnitude earthquake in Sikkim, which claimed more than 100 lives, was different from most temblors that had rocked the Himalayan region.
It did not occur on the well-known thrust faults formed due to under-thrusting of the Indian plate below the Eurasian plate as in 95 per cent of the major earthquakes in the Himalayan region. Instead, it occurred between two transverse faults represented by Tista and Gangtok lineaments where two segments of Himalayas have moved in a horizontal direction.

The Patna High Court has directed the Centre to set up a tribunal for the settlement of the Sone river water dispute between Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, especially, on the question of water sharing from the Rihand basin. Rihand is a tributary of Sone.
A division bench of the court, comprising Justices SK Katriar and Ahsanuddin Amanullah, delivered the judgment on a public interest litigation filed by former BJP legislator and convener of the Sone Area Farmers Action Committee Saryu Rai, besides 115 farmers of the old Sahabad and Patna districts.

India’s densely populated cities with poorly designed buildings makes 68 per cent of our urban population vulnerable to earthquakes.
“There are 344 towns which fall in the Zone 5 category (high risk category) making them amongst the most damage prone cities in the planet,” pointed out Shashidhar Reddy, vice-chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority.

With the submergence of thousands of villages in nine districts in Bihar appearing inevitable due to an alarming rise in the water levels of the Sone and the Ganga, chief minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday conducted an aerial survey to oversee the preparations for evacuation and relief distribution.

The state of food security delivery in India through the public distribution system is much lamented, with the government of India’s own estimates suggesting that only 27 per cent of expenditure on the PDS reaches intended beneficiaries. This has prompted suggestions that it may be worth considering replacing targeted PDS entitlements with equivalent cash transfers. Potential advantages of cash transfers include lower leakage and administrative costs, greater flexibility for households to choose their consumption baskets, and portability of benefits for migrant populations.