Dhankhar bids 68 members farewell
Fondly remembering the contribution of retiring members from the Rajya Sabha, Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar on Thursday said the wisdom shared by them would be greatly missed and their departure would leave a void. The Vice President was bidding farewell to the 68 MPs of the upper house who retired during the year. “The retirement of our colleagues will undoubtedly leave a void,” he said.
Panel pulls up centre on plastic pollution
A parliamentary panel has criticised central and state agencies over their “lackadaisical” approach in handling and monitoring plastic waste. In a report on plastic pollution, the 22-member Public Accounts Committee said that agencies have not been able to enforce the ban on single-use plastic as “plastic can still be seen strewn across all the urban and rural areas of the country”.
Railways incur extra expenditure due to delay in provisioning tariff metres: Panel
Delay in the provisioning of Availability Based Tariff (ABT) Metres by the West Central Railway resulted in an additional expenditure of Rs 75.10 crore on power purchase, according to a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report. The committee, which tabled its report in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, said the Railway Ministry had issued instructions in March 2015 to all zonal railways to get direct power from generating companies through open access and ensure the provision of ABT metres.