The Maharashtra government has spent around Rs. 1,400 crore on its flagship water conservation programme ‘Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyaan’ and completed work in 2,939 villages since its launch in March this year, a state CMO official said. The government’s integrated water management scheme aims to make the state drought-free by 2019 and rid 5,000 villages of water scarcity every year.

According to the official from the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO), the government is putting substantial focus on the rejuvenation of old structures and the policy has now shifted from constructing big dams to smaller de-centralised water structures.

“Fourteen different schemes for water conservation have been clubbed together and measures are being implemented as per the requirement of a particular village. We have started work in 6,180 villages in the first phase, out of which 1,20,485 works have already been completed,” the official said.

“In 2,939 villages, 4,244 works, worth approximately Rs 300 crore, were done through people’s participation. The state government has spent almost Rs 1,400 crore on the project till date,” he said.

The official further apprised that after Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s appeal to donate money for the scheme, more than Rs 60 crore has been deposited with the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund.

“Major contributors include Mantralaya and CMO employees, Sachkhand Gurudwara, that donated Rs 15 lakh, (and) various Ganesh mandals in Mumbai contributed a total of around Rs 30 lakh. Apart from this, contribution of Rs 34 lakh has poured in from the Shirdi Saibaba Trust and Siddhivinayak Trust, too, has donated Rs 34 lakh. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has donated Rs one crore for the project,” the official said.

“The Chief Minister has personally visited sites in more than 17 districts till date and approximately 2,459 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) water storage capacity has been created through the completed works.” he added.

The government officers in Maharashtra will now have to write their names, designations and the date while signing a file or putting any remark on it.

General administration department has issued a government resolution (GR) to this effect.

Name, designation and date will have to be mentioned while writing any remark on the file, so as to make it easier to identify, later, the officer who handled the file.

“At present, the officials only sign a particular file and put their remark….this makes it difficult to identify the official who put erroneous remark (during future inquiry),” says the GR.

“Some officials are in the habit of putting dates in ineligible handwriting, which delays the inquiry process. The new rules would help make the officials more responsible when he or she puts remark on a file in sensitive issues,” an official from the GAD department said.

The GR, signed by S M Sable, joint secretary, GAD, also states that if there are two or more officials with the same surname, initials should be written with the surname.

“Officials should follow the Union Government’s office manual in this regard,” the GR says.

Several agencies have come forward to take up development of Maharashtra’s new district Palghar, state Tribal Development Minister Vishnu Sawra said.

The state government wants to go in for all round development of the Palghar district, carved out of Thane last year, and wants to make it a model district with a modern outlook, he said.

“The proposals (for development by various agencies) will be brought before the Cabinet for its approval and awarding the contract to one agency to be selected for the mega task,” said Sawra, who is also the Guardian Minister of Palghar.

The City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), Public Works Department (PWD) and even Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) and Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority (MHADA) are ready to develop the district, he said.

“A couple of them have given us the project report for the same and the others are in the process of submitting their plans,” Sawra said.

The state government will examine all the proposals and go in for the best plan as it wants to develop Palghar into a most modern district which will be a model in the state and the country as well, he said.

State PWD Minister Eknath Shinde had last month indicated that his department or the MSRDC could undertake the task to develop the district.

A Bollywood actor has been booked for allegedly raping a television actress, police said on Sunday.

A case has been registered against actor Vishal Thakkar under relevant sections of rape and other offences, Charkop police station’s senior inspector Ramchandra Gaikwad said.

The victim, an actress who has worked in several TV serials, has alleged that the accused raped her in his house, police said, without divulging further details.

An FIR has been registered against the actor under IPC sections 376 (rape), 420 (cheating), 323, 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) and 506 (criminal intimidation), they said.

The actor has not yet been arrested. Thakkar has done small roles in movies like Tango Charlie and Chandni Bar.

A seven-year-old boy was allegedly sodomised by a 14-year-old teenager in Virar town in Palghar district neighbouring Mumbai, police said.

According to police, the teenager had been allegedly showing obscene video clippings to the victim since last three weeks and ‘sexually assaulted’ him recently.

A case under various sections of Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) 2012 was registered against the teenager at Virar police station yesterday, said Assistant Police Inspector NB Done.

The accused had also threatened the boy with dire consequences if he disclosed the incident to anyone, police said, adding the accused has been identified and further investigations are on.

The film fraternity have urged the Central and Maharashtra governments to provide an impetus to film-related education.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the state government will try to understand the concerns of the actors and artists, and bring together various other stakeholders in the film industry keeping in mind the interests of students from smaller towns and cities.

Actor Zeeshan Ayyub, an alumnus of National School of Drama (NSD), Delhi and worked in films like “Tanu Weds Manu Returns” and “Raanjhanaa”, said the government has already has existing policies to help people from arts and culture, but it does not really help due to various reasons.

“What the government can do is it can actually start providing financial aid like homes at government rate, the instruments required for performing arts at cheaper rates to help people survive in the industry,” said.

The 31-year-old actor said that with government’s aid, people will feel confident of thinking to take up arts and acting as a profession.

He also said rather than conferring awards, the Cultural Ministry can put benchmarks and chose three-four people every year and offer them aids, this way new talent can be lured and retained in the profession.

Actor Anil Mange, who has worked in films like “Singh is Bling” and will be next seen in Shah Rukh Khan’s “Raees”, has also urged the government to facilitate more training institutes in fine arts amidst FTII controversy.

Students at the prestigious Pune-based FTII have boycotted their classes for over four months protesting the appointment of TV actor and BJP member Gajendra Chauhan as its chairman.

The city’s 20-year development plan till 2034 is likely to get a ‘Swedish touch’ with the western European nation extending its expertise to help develop Mumbai as a ‘smart city’ that will be economically, ecologically and socially sustainable.

Swedish urban development and IT minister Mehmat Kaplan, who was in the city over the weekend, met State chief secretary Swadheen Kshatriya and BrihanMumbai Municipal Commissioner (BMC) Ajoy Mehta to discuss how the country could collaborate with the state as well as the richest city corporation on the continent.”

We have the expertise in various fields and we would like to collaborate with the Maharashtra government and offer our expertise in waste management, digital urban land management and urban transportation,” Kaplan said.

He said if Mumbai is to become a smart city, there are various factors that are involved which need to be well managed, which include waste and land management and transportation among others.”

Sometimes we do not know how city planning is to be dealt with.

The Geographic Information System (GIS) is an important part when you are dealing with 3D urban land management.

If this is done, we can actually make the decisions faster and socially sustainable,” he said.

The minister said that through the collection of big data, the mapped information will be available online and there will be no need to use paper and pile up files as we see in the planning offices in megapolis.”

We need to take important step of digitalising the urban land management which is a quite new technology but will make it cheaper in middle and long term,” Kaplan added.

The megapolis’ development plan till 2034 was highly criticised for large number of errors in the proposed plan, which was subsequently scrapped by the state government.

The development plan had proposed a considerable hike in Mumbai’s FSI and also opened up the so far protected south Mumbai for utilisation of transfer of development rights as floating FSI.

The overall increase in bulk FSI was linked to proximity to mass transit modes, but not indexed to provision of physical and social infrastructure.

Later, the chief minister had asked the BMC to prepare a revised DP and accordingly in July retired IAS officer Ramanath Jha was appointed to head the revision process.