Category: Patna

Patna’s Chanakya National Law University trains panchayat functionaries for faster dispute resolution

Source: hindustantimes.com

In a new initiative aimed at resolving the growing number of disputes at the village level by strengthening the justice delivery system at the grassroots level, Chanakya National Law University (CNLU), Patna, in collaboration with the department of panchayati raj, government of Bihar, has completed training of sarpanchs,up-sarpanchs, nyaya mitras, and gram katchari secretaries of Patna district.

Two-day trainings were held at the office of chair professor, panchayati raj, CNLU. About 1,000 members of gram katchari have been given training, both textual and practical, within three months. A moot court was also incorporated in the training programme under retired district judges and IAS officers.

The move is significant as it could help in lessening the mounting load of litigations in courts. As per the law, no court shall take cognisance of any case or suit that is cognisable by a bench of the gram katchari.

“We will start it in 14 other districts of Bihar with the help of the department of panchayati raj next month. Amrit Lal Meena, principal secretary, and Kuldeep Narayan, director of the department, have expressed their satisfaction over the successful completion of training programme of Patna district. Once trained, gram katcharis can bring about a perceptible change in local governance,” said SP Singh, chair professor.

“Bihar is the only state where chair professor has been estabconsent

lished by the department of panchayati raj. Ministry of panchayati Raj, government of India, has also shown an interest in establishing chair professor. I got a call from the ministry in this regard. The executive committee of CNLU has given its to start a PHD programme on various aspects of panchayati raj under the chair professor,” he added.

As per the Panchayati Raj Act, 2006, Bihar has set up gram katcharis in every panchayat for the purpose of discharging the mandated judicial functions.

The law stipulates that the state government shall, in the prescribed manner, make arrangements for training of the sarpanch, up-sarpanch, panches and nyaya mitras of the gram katchari.

Bihar has 8,392 gram katcharis and more than 33,000 personnel would be trained in phases. Chief minister Nitish Kumar had also earlier said that cases coming under the jurisdiction of gram katcharis should be transferred to them from police stations top reduce the load of litigations. Each gram katchari has five members. A sarpanch is a key figure and gram katchari is an important institution to entertain suits and cases on application of parties and police reports.

It has the powers of a civil court under the Code of Civil Procedure,1908, to take evidence and to compel attendance of the parties, witnesses and such other persons as may be required and production of documents or instruments for disposal of such suits or cases.

The powers of village katcharis include clamping of Section 144 in their jurisdiction up to 15 days, beyond which it needs to be vetted by the SDO concerned. imposing fine up to Rs 1,000 and deal with land disputes, criminal trespass, public nuisance, eve teasing or family issues.


As Heat Intensifies and Hand Pumps Dry Up, Districts in Bihar Grapple with Drinking Water Crisis

Source: news18.com

Patna: Sixty-year-old Fula Devi, a resident of Shahpur Kasim village in Vaishali district in Bihar, stares at tough days ahead.

Her eyes well up as she talks about how her crops have been destroyed due to a lack of water.

“I have lost all my cash crops spread over 10 kathas of land (17,000 sq ft) and incurred losses worth more than Rs 25,000. Our misery does not end here. We have to struggle for drinking water as well. All the hand pumps have dried up here,” she says.

Flood-prone Bihar is known for an abundance of water resources. However, several districts are facing an acute water crises this summer due to mismanagement of water bodies and a population boom. The water table has gone below 250 feet from the ground level and hand pumps and tube wells, the main sources of water for drinking and irrigation in most villages, have also dried up.

Even as locals are struggling to cope with this crisis, farmers are the worst affected. Given the non-availability of irrigation water and intense heat, their crops are fighting for survival. Their livestock does not get required quantities of drinking water either.

Shahpur Kasim is one of the many villages in Vaishali district where people are grappling with such a crisis. Villagers here before never faced such a situation until last year since tube-wells and hand pumps always had water at 55 feet.

The situation has now turned grave as the water table has dipped to 250 feet, with government hand pumps failing to pull water from the depth.

In Brahmapur village in the same district, underground water tanks have been constructed at 20-50 feet and water motors have been installed to extricate water, which is then hand-pumped for consumption.

Collecting drinking water has turned into a nightmare for villagers. Here, women flock to get a few buckets of muddy water for their daily activities.

Fewer wells are left with water due to the onslaught of tube-wells and hand pumps.

While a few parts of the district receive drinking water through tankers sent by the government, others now buy the same.

Chandan Kumar is another victim incurring heavy losses as his mango orchard and lychee plantation have completely dried up.

Kumar had planted the crops in 10 acres of land, but as there has been hardly any yield, he incurred losses worth Rs 5 lakh.

“The crisis is severe because the water level has gone down severely. No one had ever imagined that tube-wells in the village could become defunct like hand pumps as they were bored 100-200 feet below ground level,” he says.

While several villages in Lalganj block of Vaishali district face a similar crisis, the situation is the worst in Sirsa.

Besides the mango and lychee orchards, wheat sown on hectares of lands have perished due to a fall in water levels in the region.

Some of the well-off villagers have installed submersible pumps at 350 feet below the ground level to get drinking water.

Rajeshwar Singh, who has a fish pond in Sirsa village, uses a submersible pump. “We were left with no other option as our ponds were drying up and the fish had started dying. There was a drinking water crisis as well,” he says.

In the same village, Mushar Tola has been badly hit as well. Here, elderly people walk up to a kilometre to carry potable water home.

The Jal Nal Yojana (water and tap scheme) devised to provide potable water to every household in the state has failed due to improper implementation and deep-rooted corruption. The scheme has also seen wastage of water.

According to its provisions, every APL (above poverty line) family would be charged a water tax of Rs 60 a month, while BPL (below poverty line) families would have to pay Rs 30 every month.

The government had also decided to provide filtered drinking water to areas with high levels of arsenic and iron in the water.

The district public health engineering (PHE) department has devised a long-term plan towards water conservation and usage. As part of the project, the department plans to install iron containers near one-acre farms to collect water during rain.

Executive engineer (PHE) Manoj Kumar told News18, “There is a no clear policy on the part of the government regarding the installation of submersible pumps, the rampant use of which is further taking down groundwater. The department is planning to launch an awareness programme on water usage and its conservation in the district and trying to make it a part of the school curriculum.”

Vaishali usually gets 1,168mm of rain annually. But last year, it saw a deficit of 52.7% — the highest in any district in the state.

State PHE Minister Vinod Narayan Jha, who is reportedly taking stock of the prevailing situation on a daily basis, at a recent press conference said, “The department is well prepared to meet any challenge thrown by deficit rainfall in districts. We are monitoring the groundwater table reports on a daily basis.”

Jha said 25 districts in the state are drought-affected and the government has identified 37,000 non-functional hand pumps of which 15,010 have been repaired and 3,440 replaced.

Patna Durbar: How Nitish Kumar-Sushil Modi’s bond keeps BJP-JDU alliance afloat

Source: .indiatoday.in

A June 4 tweet from Union Minister Giriraj Singh, wherein he apparently taunted key ally Nitish Kumar for attending iftar events just “for a show” followed by Sushil Modi’s somewhat ambassadorial defence of Bihar chief minister has once again highlighted the case of the two cozy, but somewhat mismatched, allies in Bihar.

Sushil Modi’s BJP and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal-United (JDU) are clearly bound by a common vision and purpose in Bihar, yet also pushed apart by their political teammates and their temperaments.

It’s not for nothing that Giriraj Singh’s tweet has once again brought the irony behind the electoral friendship of Kumar and Sushil Modi, the tallest BJP leader in Bihar and one of the strongest supporters of Nitish-BJP alliance, to the fore. Kumar and Sushil Modi, in their contemporaneous careers, often symbolise the prisoner’s dilemma that circumstances had thrust upon them.

The two have somehow seen through the bitterness and understood that they were better off collaborating than confronting. But there are spoilers galore. Singh was clearly one of them.

Fresh from his promotion to the Union Cabinet in the new Narendra Modi government, the senior BJP leader, for whom Nitish Kumar had campaigned during the Lok Sabha elections to ensure his victory, on Tuesday morning tweeted four pictures from three different iftars, saying: “How beautiful the pictures could have been had falahaar (fruit feast) been organised with similar fervour during Navratri. We fall behind in our own rituals and religion but are ahead in showing off.”

These pictures were from iftar parties organised by the JD-U, Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and Opposition alliance member Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) (HAMS). Since Nitish Kumar was the only leader present in all the four pictures, the man and the target behind Singh’s tweet was not lost on anyone.

Not only this, Singh’s tweet was uploaded on the eve of Eid ul-Fitr and its underlying message seemed to be confronting the inclusive outreach of Prime Minister Modi and the secular fabric of the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government in Bihar.

Though there are suggestions that BJP President Amit Shah has advised Singh against making such comments, the Union minister has not withdrawn his tweet, which was still visible till the time of filing this report.

A section of JD-U leaders, however, refused to accept Giriraj’s tweet as a coincidence. They see a purpose in the tweet, as Singh’s quip has come at a time when relations with the BJP have turned frosty after Nitish Kumar refused to accept a “symbolic representation in the Union Cabinet.”

The BJP had offered a solitary Cabinet berth to Nitish Kumar’s JD-U in the Union Cabinet, describing it as a “symbolic representation.”

The Bihar chief minister, who heads a party of 16 Lok Sabha and six Rajya Sabha MPs, promptly shot down the saffron proposal on the ground that it should have been proportionate and not symbolic.

In what seemed like a return riposte, Nitish expanded his ministry on June 2 by inducting as many as eight JD-U members while offering just one berth to the BJP, which was not accepted by the latter. “Giriraj Singh is not alone to have taken potshots at the NDA alliance in Bihar.

In 2017, when JD-U rejoined NDA, our former National President Sharad Yadav had defied the decision. While JD-U quickly showed the door to our former national president, the BJP has failed to force Giriraj to make amends,” said a senior JD-U leader.

JD-U chief spokesperson Sanjay Singh has described Giriraj Singh’s tweet as a clear manifestation of the fact that BJP has no control over such leaders. “It is time for the BJP to take the comments of Giriraj seriously and take action,” he said.

They say momentous eras are appreciated only in retrospect, but in this case, where Nitish Kumar accepted BJP as an alliance partner, the two have together delivered magic.

A landmark Lok Sabha election victory in 2019 where the NDA won 39 of Bihar’s 40 seats looks both unprecedented and unrepeatable. The combined magic of BJP and JD-U made a spectacular start in 2005 when the two parties together unseated Lalu Prasad who seemed invincible then.

Since then, the two parties have prospered and gone from strength to strength, evolving a relationship that was to be the making of modern Bihar.

When the BJP and JD-U separated in 2013 and fought two elections against each other, the BJP won the 2014 Lok Sabha poll while Nitish Kumar won the 2015 assembly polls. The two once again came together in 2017 to deliver a watershed result in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Today, however, with Bihar Assembly polls scheduled in 2020, the two parties, JD-U and BJP, need to unthaw their relationship to fill up the fissures, which have come up after the BJP refused to let Nitish have more than one representation in the Union Cabinet.Giriraj Singh or his tweets can make the process a painful one for NDA in Bihar.

Ban private practice of Bihar government doctors, give allowance: IGIMS director

Source: dustantimes.com

With the Bihar government considering granting autonomy to some of its health facilities, director of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) has advocated banning private practice of government doctors while granting autonomy to healthcare institutions for improved patient care.

The IGIMS, which is Bihar’s only autonomous medical institution, built on the pattern of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), has achieved many milestones during the recent past. Seeing its success, the state government now wants to replicate the IGIMS model at five other healthcare institutions of Bihar.

Among the institutions being considered for grant of autonomy are the multi-specialty Patna Medical College Hospital (PMCH); the Indira Gandhi Institute of Cardiology (IGIC), a superspecialty centre for cardiology; Rajendra Nagar Government Hospital, a superspecialty centre for eyecare; Lok Nayak Jaiprakash Narayan Hospital, a superspecialty centre for orthopaedics; and the New Gardiner Road Hospital, a superspecialty centre for endocrinology and nephrology.

Bihar’s principal secretary, health, Sanjay Kumar, had recently said that the government was actively considering autonomy for five of its premier health facilities on the pattern of IGIMS.

Dr Nihar Ranjan Biswas, who belongs to the AIIMS-New Delhi and is on deputation to the IGIMS as its director, suggested that government doctors be given non-practising allowance (NPA) and should be available round the clock, as was the practice at AIIMS.

Dr Biswas had floated the idea of “full autonomy to medical institutions” in presence of health minister Mangal Pandey, speaker of the Bihar legislative assembly Vijay Kumar Choudhary and principal secretary, health, Sanjay Kumar, during a seminar on kidney transplant organised at the institute on May 26.

Sharing his recipe of success, Dr Biswas said, “Medical institutions should be granted full autonomy in the true sense. With autonomy, appointment of director as also selection of faculty members should be done through all-India competitions.”

Dr Biswas was also averse to the idea of extending free treatment to patients. “The government should subsidise the cost of treatment and diagnostic tests, but not make healthcare facilities available free of cost to patients,” he added.

Doctors were, however, divided on banning private practice in Bihar. While the Bihar Health Services Association (BHSA) supported giving doctors NPA and remuneration at par with the Centre, the Indian Medical Association (IMA), Bihar, opposed it, saying it should be “optional”.

“Government doctors should be given the choice whether they want to avail of NPA or not take it and do private practice. The decision to ban private practice should not be thrust upon all doctors. If doctors who do not opt for NPA were to resign, many government medical colleges will risk being derecognised by the Medical Council of India (MCI) due to faculty shortage,” said Dr Sahjanand Prasad Singh, immediate past president of IMA-Bihar.

Asked if that meant that doctors wanted to have the best of both worlds, Dr Singh said, “In a way, yes… but it will also benefit the state. Giving NPA and remuneration to all state government doctors at par with the Centre will be a huge burden on the state’s exchequer.”

BHSA general secretary Dr Ranjit Kumar said, “We have already given an undertaking to the government in 2007 that we want NPA. Private practice remains banned on paper after the government withdrew NPA from March 2001. However, a majority of government doctors continue to do private practice.”

Senior doctors of the two associations, on condition of anonymity, said that many doctors of AIIMS-Patna and IGIMS, all getting NPA, were continuing with their private practice due to poor implementation of rules.

The Bihar government had banned private practice and paid NPA to its doctors for a limited period of 11 months between March 1, 2000 and February 2001 before withdrawing NPA.

Bihar to waive off 50 per cent taxes levied on e-rickshawas

Source: newindianexpress.com

PATNA: Alarmed at growing rate of  pollution, the state government’s seven departments have collectively prepared an integrated action plan to tame the menace of pollution in Patna and other cities.

According to a survey report of WHO, Bihar’s three cities namely Patna, Gaya and Muzaffarpur have been found to be among the most 20 polluted cities of world.

Speaking at a world environment day function on Wednesday evening, deputy chief minister of state Sushil Kumar Modi said that all possible steps are being taken to check the pollution in cities growing at an alarming rate.

“In a move to beat air pollution,the government has decided to waive 50% of total taxes levied on the purchase and running of battery-propelled e-rickshawas”, he said.

He further claimed that arrangements have been made to check the pollution emission from vehicles at over 500 fuel refilling centres in addition to run eco-friendly electric buses.

“On 45 fuel-refiling centres in Patna alone, arrangement has been made to issue online pollution check certificates in order to down the level of pollution”he said, adding that state government was committed to control the pollution through awarness among vehicle users and systems.


Bihar seeks to redefine danger levels in its rivers

Source: hindustantimes.com

After a long time, the Bihar government is going to undertake a massive exercise to revise the danger mark level of all major rivers in the state to make flood-fighting work more effective and reduce chances of false alarm of impending floods in case of rivers in spate in flood-prone districts.

The Bihar State Disaster Management Authority has recommended the idea of redefining the danger level of all major as well as small rivers after a study done on the subject over the last one year.

Experts said the primary reason for revising the danger level of rivers in the state is siltation that has caused the river beds to rise, a reason why the current danger level of rivers measured decades back are not so accurate.

“As the river bed of all majority of rivers has risen over the past many decades due to siltation, the danger level indicators are not so accurate. It often leads to false alarm of impending floods when in reality the river is flowing much below the danger mark. So, a reassessment of the danger level of major rivers is imperative,” said Vyasji, vice-chairman of the state’s disaster management authority.

In Bihar, there are 12 major river basins, including Ganga, Mahananda, Kosi, Bagmati, Sone, Karamnasa, Kamla, Chandan and Gandak, besides a large number of small rivers and their tributaries.

Sources said the state’s disaster management authority had already directed the water resources department and written to the Central Water Commission ( CWC) to start the work, which is going to be a time-consuming exercise. Sources said the government had been given the time to complete the exercise in next couple of months so that the new system comes in place before the rivers go in spate in the state.

The gauge readings of rivers is different from one point to another.

Like in Patna district, the Ganga’s gauge reading is different at Hatihdha , Gandhi ghat and Digha, said Vyasji.

To elaborate, the highest flood level( HFL) of Ganga in Patna was 50.27 metres but was revised to 50.52 metres in 2016.

“The gauge readings are different at many points of rivers and it has to be examined based on different parameters. Besides, the siltation of the rivers will be also taken into account in assessing the danger mark,” he said.

Ganga and Kosi are the major rivers in the state facing heavy siltation and efforts have been made to reduce the sedimentation to lower the river bed.

Kosi deluge in 2008 was one of the worst disasters in the state’s flood history in recent decades. Various studies on river management have put emphasis on regular dredging to reduce the siltation and check floods.

Besides, the disaster management authority also believes the revision of danger mark level of all major rivers, including where barrages have come up, would help check instances of false alarm of floods.

Officials said the water resources department, the parent department responsible for flood management, would be able to make proper flood management plan in advance based on accurate data once the revision is done.

“Whenever a river gets swollen either due to heavy rains or heavy discharge from upstream, panic grips people residing nears the rivers and the administration also starts gearing up resources for flood fighting. But in reality, such alarms are false many a time. So a revision of danger mark of rivers is need of the hour,” said Vyasji.