Shimla, July 12 (IANS) The Congress government in Himachal Pradesh on Friday at a Cabinet meeting decided to withdraw the free electricity scheme benefitting all income-tax payers.
However, the 125-unit free power subsidy to domestic consumers will continue for all other categories, including BPL and IRDP families.
A decision in this regard was taken at the Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Sukhvinder Sukhu.
Seven smugglers were also taken into custody after four consecutive raids at Seemanagar on State Highway No. 11 on Thursday, and Rs 11,58,500 unaccounted cash was seized from their possession.
The decision was announced by Chaitanya Prasad, Additional Chief Secretary in the Water Resources Department, and Deepak Kumar Singh, Additional Chief Secretary in the Rural Works Department, who emphasised the state government's seriousness about the issue.
Known as 'Samudrayaan’, the initiative of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) will be a crewed expedition to a depth of 6,000 m in the central Indian Ocean onboard Matsya6000 -- a manned submersible vehicle developed indigenously.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will pay an official visit to Russia and Austria on July 8-10, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced on Thursday. Prime Minister Modi will arrive in Moscow on July 8 at the invitation of the Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold the 22nd India-Russia Annual Summit.
To save groundwater, the Punjab government has set a target to adopt direct seeding of rice (DSR) over five lakh acres, Agriculture Minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian said here on Thursday. He said over two lakh acres have already been sown using the DSR technique, which was 1.72 lakh acres higher than the last year.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday submitted a chargesheet at a special court here in connection with the blast at Bhupatinagar in East Midnapore district of West Bengal in December 2022 in which three persons were killed. A total of six persons have been named on the 35-page chargesheet.