New Delhi: The government’s ambitious national urban development plan will ease up on the reform agenda for state and municipal governments. This is a major departure from the take-it-or-leave-it set of reforms that stymied them from dipping into the R60,000-crore corpus of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). The revised mission due to be rolled out before the end of March after a five-year experience with the first one will instead offer two options for reforms to states. The first is a base-level reforms agenda that states will find easier to qualify for.

The Planning Commission on Thursday cleared the investment proposal for modernisation of Haryana’s irrigation network. The project, estimated to cost Rs 115.94 crore (2011 price level), will undertake rehabilitation, renovation and modernisation of critically damaged channels of the State’s irrigation network, a Plan panel release said.

State-owned NTPC Ltd’s capacity addition target of 66,000 mega watt for the Twelfth Plan period could take a knocking as legal hurdles hold up the placement of equipment orders for key projects slated to come up over the next five years. The company has been unable to go ahead with the placement of equipment orders for four super-critical projects in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar as its bulk tender floated in 2009 for the supply of 11 boilers and 11 turbines of 660 MW each has been stuck in court.

New Delhi Officials of the food, agriculture and finance ministries will meet the state and central ministers concerned in a bid to thrash out objections raised by the states over the proposed Food Security Bill. The two-day conference that begins on Wednesday will also take up the creation of additional infrastructure for grain storage.

The Planning Commission has given investment clearance for the Rs 54.43-crore project for the restoration of Dibang and Lohit rivers to their original courses at Dholla Hatiguli in Assam. The project is expected to be completed within the current fiscal year ending March 31, an official release said.

The Ministry of Water Resources and the Brahmaputra Board would restrict the expenditure to the approved cost and no addition expenditure beyond approved cost is to be permitted unless the revised estimate is approved as per the prescribed procedure, it added.

Ramesh for granting states discretion over 50% of funds for central schemes. The upcoming budget is likely to give state governments discretionary powers over about 50% of funds under central government schemes, a move that will allow better utilisation of resources. “The current way of functioning is not ideal...State governments would like to spend it on other schemes and they should have the right to decide,” Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh told ET.

Girish Sant, founder of NGO Prayas, a policy advocacy group in the power sector, died of a heart attack in a hotel in New Delhi on Thursday. He was 46.
Sant completed his BTech in chemical engineering from IIT-Bombay in 1986, followed by a Master’s degree in energy systems engineering in 1988. But instead of pursuing a corporate career like most other IIT graduates, `Bandya’, as he was known to friends, chose to become an analyst in public policy. Prayas was a think tank that contributed greatly to the debate on power sector policy.

NEW DELHI, Feb 6 – After clearing two remaining phases of the Majuli Island Protection Project, the Planning Commission has accorded investment clearance to ‘Restoration of Dibang and Lohit rivers to their original courses at Dholla-Hatighuli’ project. The project, estimated to cost Rs 54.43 crore, is to be completion in 2011-12 and Plan accounts would be closed by March 31, 2012. Plan panel sources said the project may be executed according to the approved outlays by the Ministry of Water Resources and Brahmaputra Board.

AGARTALA:The proposed up-gradation of Agartala airport to an international airstrip has run into rough weather with the dispute over land acquisition for expansion of the runway and other mandatory infrastructure.

Officials here on Saturday said that the state government had been demanding an international airport for the past two years but the Airport Authority of India(AAI) sought land as the state’s contribution.