Dehradun Diary

Uttarakhand has increased payments for workers under MGNREGS from `209 to `213. This will directly benefit 12.49 lakh job card holders.

Payments hiked under rural job scheme
Uttarakhand has increased payments for workers under MGNREGS from `209 to `213. This will directly benefit 12.49 lakh job card holders. Programme executive director for the state, S Murugeshan said, “The increment has been effective from April 1, 2022 and will benefit more around 12.49 job card holders.” Nearly 50 per cent of this workforce are women. Last year, the government had increased the number of working days guaranteed per year to the poor under MGNREGS from 100 to 150. Shockingly, even engineering graduates, diploma and Masters degree holders have applied for manual jobs under the rural employment scheme.

Litfest celebrating storytelling culture concludes
To celebrate the culture of reading, storytelling, and poetry rendition among Doon residents, the fourth edition of the Dehradun Literature Festival was held between April 1 and 3 at Hyatt Regency and the riverside campus of the Doon International School. This year’s DLF featured a line-up of panelists, including Tusshar Kapoor, Sonu Nigam, Malini Awasthy, Imtiaz Ali, Tahira Kashyap, Vivek Agnihotri, Pallavi Joshi, Praladh Kakkar, Piyush Pandey, Jonathan Gill Harris, Ian Cardozo, Madhavi Menon, Saeed Naqvi, Deepam Chatterjee, Kiran Manral, Subhash Garg, Nayanika Mahtani and many more authors and eminent personalities all around the country.

U’Khand in top three for encroachment of forests
Uttarakhand ranks third among nine Himalayan states in India when it comes to encroachment of forests. A total of 10649.11 hectares of fursat land in Uttarakhand is under encroachment, revealed the data shared by the union government recently in the Parliament session. Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir top the list with 16,512.39 hectares of forest encroached upon followed by Mizoram with 10,852.80 hectare and Uttarakhand (10,649.11). An RTI reply in October 2019 revealed that about 12,81,397 hectares of India’s forests were under encroachment. Himachal Pradesh ranks fourth.

vineet upadhyay
Our correspondent in Dehradun vineet.upadhyay@newindianexpress.com