Srinagar: At least seven houseboats were gutted on Monday in a massive fire that broke out in Nigeen Lake Srinagar causing extensive damage to the property worth crores, officials said.

Three wooden huts were also gutted in the incident.

A group of the tourists who were staying in the houseboats at the time of fire were rescued and taken to safer places by the owners and locals.

Fire and Emergency services said fire broke out in a houseboat and engulfed adjacent houseboats in the row causing extensive damage.

Eleven fire tenders were rushed to spot from the city centre fire stations to douse the fire that broke out around 2.27 am damaging seven deluxe houseboats and three wooden huts at Nigeen lake.

Houseboats are luxury floating lodgings made of Cedrus (Deodar) and Walnut wood and are the ultimate dream destinations for the tourists in Dal and Nigeen Lake.

The damaged houseboats were identified as New Jersey, New Maharaja Palace, Indian Place, Royal Paradise, Lily of the world, Young Swift and Flora.

The cause of the fire is being investigated, they said

Srinagar: The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce & Industry (Inc) expressed its grief and sorrow about the fire incident in which seven houseboats were gutted in a massive blaze .

According to a detailed statement, the KCCI said that around 2.30 a.m. on 4th of April, 2022 fire erupted in one of the houseboats in Nigeen Lake and quickly spread to others in the neighbourhood.

Sheikh Ashiq Ahmad, President KCC&I requested Manoj Sinha, Lieutenant Governor, UT, J&K for  immediate financial  relief  and  to give full support, rehabilitation and compensation to the affected houseboat holders.

We  also  request  administration  to   give permission  for  construction  of  new Houseboats under single window clearance and  provide them Timber  on  subsidized rates so that  these seven families  can  survive  again, the statement further reads.

New Delhi: Union Minister of Railways, Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday launched a new website of CBI (https:bi.gov.in) which is a dynamic and responsive with public interface tool having user-friendly content management and administration features. The website is Bi-lingual (English and Hindi) with role based access. The website will provide authentic information about CBI to all stakeholders. On the occasion of ‘Cyber Jaagrukta Saptah’, Ashwini Vaishnaw inaugurated the ‘Second National Conference on Cyber Crime Investigation and Digital Forensics’ at Vigyan Bhawan here today. The conference was organised by the CBI. Addressing the conference, Vaishnaw said that the subject being discussed during the conference is of very high relevance to all, and added that cyber forensics has a very important role. He also referred to the advantages and vulnerability of placing in public domain the vital personal/private information on a massive scale. Pointing out that the way our society, our organizations, our day to day working has got integrated and shifted to devices like smartphones, we have gained a lot of productivity, efficiency, convenience, but simultaneously the possibility of somebody intruding in our day to day life has increased many fold. This can be sometimes benign but mostly malignant, CBI, in a statement, said. He also spoke about the importance of mutual cooperation, saying that cybercrime is borderless which can be perpetrated from those emails which used to come 10-12 years back and today’s world where day in day out spams come from all parts of the world. “So that kind of mutual cooperation will be very important between countries, between organizations, all branches which are affected by cyber-crime,” he added.

Srinagar: Set target of 100 % saturation of all Individual Beneficiary Schemes directed Divisional Commissioner Kashmir Pandurang K Pole to officers while reviewing the implementation of Individual Beneficiary Oriented Schemes (IBOS) and Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) in a meeting with officers of different departments, here.

The meeting was attended by HoDs and representatives of various departments including  Health &Family Welfare,  Social Welfare Department, Horticulture,  Entrepreneurship Development Institute,  Employment J&K, Rural Development Department Kashmir,  Sheep Husbandry, Industries & Commerce,  H&H, ULB,  FCS &CA, School Education, Animal Husbandry, Colleges, Agriculture, Fisheries, NRLM, Dy CEO Khadi,  Tribal Affairs, Health Services Kashmir, Rural Sanitation &  Divisional Nodal Officer, J&K Bank.

On the occasion, Div Com directed all departments to conduct workshops for HoDs, District officers and Tehsil officers on guidelines of schemes with in two weeks.

Besides, he stressed on them to elaborate the details and guidelines of Centrally Sponsored Schemes to these officers by employing the services of resource persons so that the benefits  will reach to the people.

Div Com also impressed on publication of contents of individual beneficiary oriented schemes besides display the details on dashboards and hoarding for mass awareness regarding schemes.

While reviewing targets achieved by different departments, Div Com asked concerned officers to broaden the scope of schemes and increase the number of beneficiaries to achieve hundred percent saturation.

Further, he directed officers present to upload the details of all beneficiaries on official websites so any person can access and evaluate nature of benefit and efficiency of schemes.

He stressed on flagging and addressing of   constrains if any faced in implementation of any CSS.

Meanwhile, he issued separate direction to departments for doubling the physical and financial expenditure targets and reach out to maximum individuals.

New Delhi: The Central government on Tuesday will launch “Prakriti,” a grievance app, a “green initiative on plastic”  with the goal of ridding the country of single-use plastic (SUP) this year.

The App will be launched by Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav and Minister of State Ashwini Kumar Choubey.

The Central Pollution Control Board tweeted that any person who sees the manufacturing, sale and usage of single-use plastic in their areas can report or share their grievances by using this app.

India will implement a blanket ban on certain single-use plastic items from July 1, 2022 following its 2019 resolution to address plastic pollution in the country.

The prohibited plastic items include earbuds, flags, candy and ice-cream sticks, decorative thermocol, PVC banners less than 100 microns thick, stirrers, wrapping films, cups, glasses and cutlery among others.

Additionally, no plastic carry bags less than 120 microns thick can be used after December 31.

According to a fact sheet released by the Environment Ministry and the Energy and Resources Institute (TERFI), a think tank, approximately 43 per cent of plastic is used for packaging, with the majority being single-use.

The per capita plastic use in India is about 9.7 kg, mostly packaging material, the central pollution body estimates.

It is observed that the per capita plastic waste generation has almost doubled over the last five years.

The report said Goa, Delhi and Kerala have reported the highest per capita plastic waste generation. Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura have reported the lowest per capita plastic waste generation.

Earlier, the Union Environment Ministry notified the extended producer responsibility (EPR) guidelines for plastic packaging waste.

To be implemented from July 1, the new regulations mandate  the recycling and reuse of a certain percentage of plastic produced by manufacturers, importers and brand owners.

Registering with the central and state pollution control boards has also been made compulsory under the new rules.

New Delhi: Six newly elected members took oath in the Rajya Sabha on Monday.

The six are Pavitra Margherita (BJP, Assam), Rwngwra Narzary (UPPL, Assam), Jebi Mather Hisham (Congress, Kerala), Sandosh Kumar (CPI, Kerala), A A Rahim (CPI-M, Kerala) and S. Phangnon Konyak (BJP, Nagaland).

The election to fill 13 seats in the Upper House was held on March 31.