Assam gets Rs 9 crore for sports development

The Union ministry of youth and sports on Thursday sanctioned Rs 9.31 crore to the state for development and maintenance of playgrounds in 666 village panchayats and 44 block panchayats under Panchayat Yuva Krida Aur Khel Abhiyan (PYKKA).

In 2009, the ministry had sanctioned an amount of Rs 4.81 crore to the state for the development and maintenance of playgrounds in 333 village panchayats and 22 block panchayats.

Under the PYKKA, which was introduced in 2008-09, playgrounds were developed and maintained in villages and block panchayats across the country in a phased manner. Competitions are conducted annually at block, district, state and national level in these playgrounds.

Jorhat Science Centre-cum-Planetarium to open in January

The Assam government is offering the people of Upper Assam, especially children, an out of this world New Year gift in the form of the Jorhat Science Centre-cum-Planetarium.

The construction of the double-storey building has been completed and installation is in progress. The project, coming up next to the Ahom-era Rajmao Barpukhuri, is likely to be inaugurated in January.

The building is being constructed on a six-bigha and four katha plot of land at a cost of Rs 5 crore approximately, and will be the first of its kind in Assam with Dispur and Delhi both funding the project.

The Assam Science Technology and Environment Council is the implementing agency of the project and the National Council of Science Museum has designed the project and all its technical specifications.

Five geckos rescues by Assam Rifles at Moreh

Joining the multi-pronged drive against the increasing poaching and smuggling of tokay geckos in the state, Assam Rifles personnel seized five geckos meant to be smuggled to China via Myanmar from two smugglers at the border town of Moreh.

Personnel of 9 Assam Rifles launched an operation to curb such smuggling and apprehended the two, along with five specimen of the rare reptile species, at Moreh Gate No 2 on Monday, said Assam Rifles officials here on Thursday.

The geckos were supposed to be smuggled from Moreh to Myanmar and were to be sent to China, the statement said, adding that the estimated cost of a gecko is about Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000 in the local (grey) market.

Lets debate on influx : AASU says to Tarun Gogoi

The All Assam Students’ Union today dared chief minister Tarun Gogoi to start an open debate on the problem of illegal migration in the state to find concrete ways to solve it.

The student organisation’s challenge came a day after Dispur asked the former to substantiate its allegation that the government’s recently published white paper on the foreigner problem was a “half truth” or a “white lie”.

On Monday, the AASU had come out with a 90-page booklet accusing the governments at Dispur and New Delhi of betraying the state’s people by not implementing the Assam Accord for the last 27 years.

The union also alleged that the government’s white paper had suppressed many important historical facts to mislead the people of Assam.

Assam's jails are clogged with life convicts

More than half the convicts lodged in jails across Assam are undergoing life imprisonment.

This was revealed by the latest prison statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau recently, which states that the percentage of convicts serving life sentence in the state was 59.7 in 2011. The report added that this was more than the national average — 53.6 per cent.

Besides Assam, the other two northeastern states where the share of convicts serving life sentences is more than the national average are Manipur (62.5 per cent) and Tripura (55 per cent).

In Assam, out of a total of 1,874 convicts serving life sentences, 60 are women, while in Manipur out of 20 such convicts, one is a woman and in Tripura out of 313 such convicts, nine are women.