Latest news with #ULB
Time of India
11 hours ago
- General
- Time of India
Gurgaon pushes for sanitation overhaul with ward-level action plan
Gurgaon: A ward-level cleanliness campaign will be launched to address the city's worsening sanitation crisis. The ward-wise strategy, announced as part of an elaborate action plan, includes the deployment of dedicated teams in each ward with no shortage of resources. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Every ward will be treated as an independent unit, equipped with one earthmover, three tractors, four to five sanitation workers and oversight by the ward councillor, junior engineer and SDO. "A one-month intensive cleaning campaign will be undertaken in each ward. The best-performing ward will be honoured by the chief minister with a cash reward," urban local bodies (ULB) minister Vipul Goel said on Monday. Goel, who was in the city to review the sanitation work, asked officials to treat the campaign as a mission, saying "cleanliness in the city is a top priority for the state". He asked them to make the city "beautiful and clean". The plan was discussed at a review meeting held at the PWD rest house after the minister visited the Bandhwari waste plant. Goel — while addressing the meeting attended by deputy commissioner Ajay Kumar, MCG commissioner Pradeep Dahiya, municipal commissioner of Faridabad Dhirendra Khadgata and senior officials from GMDA and MCG — said Gurgaon is seen as a global city and the "work done here sends a message at the national and international level". Goel asked officials to submit a detailed report of the work done so far. He also said construction and demolition (C&D) waste sites must be improved without delay. Officials said tenders for C&D waste disposal will be issued before Aug 10. The minister also ordered a survey of 20-year-old sewer lines in areas prone to waterlogging. "Based on the report, it will be decided whether to repair or replace the sewer network. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The task must be completed within a month," Goel said. The minister asked the officials to ensure secondary garbage collection points are properly enclosed to ensure these are not visibly unpleasant and improve hygiene surrounding these points. He ordered that potholes formed during monsoon be identified for early repair after the rains end. Earlier in the day, Goel visited the Bandhwari landfill site and directed the officials to ensure proper disposal of leachate generated at the waste management plant. He also asked the officials to expedite the tender process for the disposal of legacy waste. MCG chief Pradeep Dahiya said that beautification works at the plant are progressing well. "Improvements are being made not only from an environmental perspective but also to enhance the site's visual appeal for the general public. The installation of a view cutter to screen the plant from the road has been completed. A tender has been floated for additional works including plantation, fencing, tree guards, surface turfing and landscaping, with an estimated cost of Rs 96 lakh," Dahiya said. Meanwhile, MCG has launched an intensified garbage collection drive following directions from the ULB commissioner and secretary Vikas Gupta on Sunday.
Hans India
3 days ago
- Business
- Hans India
Property auto-mutation to be rolled out in 17 corporations
Vijayawada: Ina major step toward transforming urban governance, the state government unveiled a groundbreaking Auto-Mutation System that will enable the instantaneous mutation of property ownership records at the time of registration. This pioneering digital initiative, which will initially be introduced in 17 municipal corporations starting August 1, 2025, marks a critical milestone in e-Governance and citizen service reforms. This innovative solution is designed to eliminate the need for property owners to visit urban local bodies (ULBs) separately for mutation formalities, thereby drastically reducing bureaucratic delays and enhancing transparency in property transactions. The state government has adopted a phased rollout approach, with the Auto-Mutation System first being deployed across 17 municipal corporations. The system will gradually be introduced in all urban local bodies. Until now, property mutation — the official update of municipal ownership records — has been a manual and time-consuming process. Property owners often faced challenges such as multiple visits to government offices, repeated document submissions, and a lack of transparency. These issues disproportionately impacted senior citizens, working professionals, and non-resident property owners. In response, the municipal administration and urban development department, under the leadership of principal secretary S Suresh Kumar collaborated with the registrations and stamps department to develop an integrated and fully automated IT system. With the Auto-Mutation System, when a property is registered at the sub-registrar's office, the mutation process is automatically triggered in the background. To ensure the process is instant and seamless, the system requires two conditions to be met: the buyer must pay the applicable mutation fee, and all outstanding municipal dues (property tax, vacant land tax, water supply, and sewerage charges) must be cleared. Once these conditions are fulfilled, the system instantly processes the mutation request and updates the ownership records within the respective municipal corporation's database. This eliminates the need for property owners to submit a separate application or visit the ULB, ultimately creating a more efficient and user-friendly experience for all citizens.
Japan Today
5 days ago
- Science
- Japan Today
From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice
By Umberto BACCHI In a small, refrigerated room at a Brussels university, parka-wearing scientists chop up Antarctic ice cores tens of thousands of years old in search of clues to our planet's changing climate. Trapped inside the cylindrical icicles are tiny air bubbles that can provide a snapshot of what the earth's atmosphere looked like back then. "We want to know a lot about the climates of the past because we can use it as an analogy for what can happen in the future," said Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Zekollari was part of a team of four that headed to the white continent in November on a mission to find some of the world's oldest ice -- without breaking the bank. Ice dating back millions of years can be found deep inside Antarctica, close to the South Pole, buried under kilometers of fresher ice and snow. But that's hard to reach and expeditions to drill it out are expensive. A recent EU-funded mission that brought back some 1.2-million-year-old samples came with a total price tag of around 11 million euros (around $12.8 million). To cut costs, the team from VUB and the nearby Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) used satellite data and other clues to find areas where ancient ice might be more accessible. Just like the water it is made of, ice flows towards the coast -- albeit slowly, explained Maaike Izeboud, a remote sensing specialist at VUB. And when the flow hits an obstacle, say a ridge or mountain, bottom layers can be pushed up closer to the surface. In a few rare spots, weather conditions like heavy winds prevent the formation of snow cover -- leaving thick layers of ice exposed. Named after their colouration, which contrasts with the whiteness of the rest of the continent, these account for only about one percent of Antarctica territory. "Blue ice areas are very special," said Izeboud. Her team zeroed in on a blue ice stretch lying about 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) above sea level, around 60 kilometers from Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station. Some old meteorites had been previously found there -- a hint that the surrounding ice is also old, the researchers explained. A container camp was set up and after a few weeks of measurements, drilling, and frozen meals, in January the team came back with 15 ice cores totaling about 60 meters in length. These were then shipped from South Africa to Belgium, where they arrived in late June. Inside a stocky cement ULB building in the Belgian capital, they are now being cut into smaller pieces to then be shipped to specialized labs in France and China for dating. Zekollari said the team hopes some of the samples, which were taken at shallow depths of about 10 meters, will be confirmed to be about 100,000 years old. Climate 'treasure hunt' This would allow them to go back and dig a few hundred meters deeper in the same spot for the big prize. "It's like a treasure hunt," Zekollari, 36, said, comparing their work to drawing a map for "Indiana Jones". "We're trying to cross the good spot on the map... and in one and a half years, we'll go back and we'll drill there," he said. "We're dreaming a bit, but we hope to get maybe three, four, five-million-year-old ice." Such ice could provide crucial input to climatologists studying the effects of global warming. Climate projections and models are calibrated using existing data on past temperatures and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- but the puzzle has some missing pieces. By the end of the century temperatures could reach levels similar to those the planet last experienced between 2.6 and 3.3 million years ago, said Etienne Legrain, 29, a paleo-climatologist at ULB. But currently there is little data on what CO2 levels were back then -- a key metric to understand how much further warming we could expect. "We don't know the link between CO2 concentration and temperature in a climate warmer than that of today," Legrain said. His team hopes to find it trapped inside some very old ice. "The air bubbles are the atmosphere of the past," he said. "It's really like magic when you feel it." © 2025 AFP
News18
7 days ago
- Politics
- News18
Himachal Cabinet to review decision to postpone reservation roster for ULB polls
Last Updated: Shimla, Jul 22 (PTI) The Himachal Pradesh Cabinet will review its decision to postpone the reservation roster for the urban local body (ULB) elections in its meeting scheduled to be held on July 24, a senior official said on Tuesday. Himachal Pradesh Principal Secretary of Urban Development, Devesh Kumar, also informed the State Election Commission (SEC) that only the state Cabinet can revoke or modify its June 28 decision. 'The department shall place the matter in the next Cabinet meeting to be held on July 24. Therefore, it is requested that any further action regarding ULB elections may be postponed till a decision is taken by the Cabinet," Kumar said in the letter to the SEC secretary. The SEC, on July 10, took strong exception to the Urban Local Body (ULB) Department's letter to all deputy commissioners, seeking the postponement of the election reservation roster for the ULB elections due to the non-availability of updated census data. The commission, in a letter to the state's chief secretary, asserted that the ULB Department has no authority to alter the schedule issued by the SEC, which is a constitutional body, and asked the government to immediately withdraw the directions. The elections to all municipal bodies in the state except Shimla Municipal Corporation are scheduled to be held in seven municipal corporations, 29 municipal councils and 37 nagar panchayats. Elections are also to be held in more than 3,600 panchayats. For the municipal elections, the Election Commission released the schedule for deciding the ward division, delimitation, reservation roster of all the wards two months ago which lapsed on July 11 and to provide complete information of the reserved wards to the Election Commission by July 15. Principal Urban Development had asked all ten DCs of non Tribal districts in the state asked to postpone the reservation process for ULBs due non-availability and absence of actual updated demographic data of electors of Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities and due to delayed national Census, the implementation/finalization of the reservation roster for the ULBs elections shall be postponed until the latest Census data becomes available. As such, the Census 2011 data remains the relevant and legitimate basis for the reservation of seats in the upcoming ULB elections, as it is the last published census data available, the SEC said and directed that the ULB Department' letter be withdrawn immediately. PTI BPL RHL view comments First Published: July 22, 2025, 20:30 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Time of India
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Not so swachh: MCG, MCM among 81 civic bodies in Haryana that fudged waste data
Gurgaon: After the Swachh Survekshan results were declared on July 17, city residents spoke about alleged data manipulation. They asked how Gurgaon could improve its rankings from 140 last year to 41 this year despite construction debris and garbage strewn across the roads and public places. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now It has come to light now among 's 87 municipalities, 81 local bodies — including NCR cities Gurgaon, Faridabad and Manesar — provided inaccurate information by claiming 100% door-to-door waste collection during the survey. Several urban local bodies (ULBs) recorded less than 60% coverage, with some falling below 40%. According to the data accessed by TOI, significant discrepancies were found between reported and actual door-to-door waste collection coverage across several cities in Haryana. Gurgaon's claim of 100% doorstep collection contrasted sharply with the actual survey finding of 59% coverage. commissioner Pradeep Dahiya told TOI, "We will probe the matter and a report will be sought from the nodal officer of Swachh Bharat Mission. We will submit it to the directorate and wait for their review on the same." In the backdrop of the revelations, Haryana ULB department has written to all municipalities, highlighting such "significant misreporting" indicates serious negligence, stemming from either oversight failures or intentional data falsification. The letter, sent on July 19 to the municipalities, also says this behaviour "damages the state's reputation" and affects its position in national Swachh Survekshan rankings. The department has instructed municipalities to levy penalties on agencies that have misrepresented facts in their door-to-door waste collection and waste transportation services data on the Swachh portal. The department mandates issuing show-cause notices to the respective SBM nodal officers of these ULBs. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Report within 7 days Both deputy municipal commissioners and municipal commissioners must submit a detailed factual report to headquarters within seven days, including recommendations for issuing chargesheets against relevant officials under applicable service regulations, read the letter. The communication also revealed that while most Haryana ULBs reported 100% doorstep waste collection coverage on the SBM portal, independent assessment for Swachh Survekshan in 2024 showed considerably lower figures. The ULB department instructed commissioners and deputy municipal commissioners to submit their findings on this matter by July 26. The data inconsistencies extended to other cities as well. Manesar's reported 100% coverage was found to be only 72% in reality. Faridabad's claim of 100% coverage was contradicted by ground surveys showing only 35% actual coverage, revealing a substantial 65% gap. Similarly, Nuh's claim of complete coverage was discovered to be just 54%. Palwal and Panchkula demonstrated actual coverage rates of 57% and 61% respectively, despite claiming 100%. The surveys also revealed Rewari achieving 73% coverage, while Bhiwani registered 48%. "This gross misreporting reflects a grave dereliction of duty either due to supervisory failure or deliberate data manipulation. It tarnishes the image of the state, undermines our ranking in national assessments and jeopardises funding and credibility under the Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 Urban," read the letter sent by the ULB to the municipalities on Saturday. However, several cities demonstrated commendable performance in waste collection services. Karnal's reported 100% coverage was largely accurate, with surveys confirming 98% implementation. Panipat and Samalkha achieved impressive 99% coverage, whilst Rohtak reached 96%. Ganaur's claim of 100% coverage was fully validated by the ground survey. Among the cities that performed well, Karnal also submitted 100% doorstep waste collection coverage and the survey found it to be 98% on the ground. Panipat and Samalkha got 99%, Rohtak got 96%, and Ganaur's claim matched with the survey at 100%.
