As West Bengal Assembly polls are inching closer and BJP and Trinamool Congress are utilising every day to intensify political slugfest, the third front in the
India News: NEW DELHI: A day after the Supreme Court stayed the implementation of the three agriculture laws, Union Minister of State for Agriculture Kailash Chou.
Forest officials said that their department has been trying to preserve Sundarpura forests in Vadodara taluka and turn it into a sanctuary since last three decades.
VADODARA: Barodians could well have watched a herd of blackbucks sprint by in open fields amid a sanctuary just a few kilometres away from the city. But thanks to the incessant delays in permission by government departments, Vadodara missed the bus to be another home to a blackbucks after Velavadar in Saurashtra.
Forest officials said that their department has been trying to preserve Sundarpura forests in Vadodara taluka and turn it into a sanctuary since last three decades. Located about 20 kilometres south of the city, Sundarpura is a small village with sprawling land around.
For 10 days, aided by winds that keep changing direction and the dryness of winter afternoons, the forests of Dzukou Valley along the Nagaland-Manipur border have been burning. Four IAF choppers, a 300-strong contingent of police, NDRF, SDRF, forest officials and local volunteers are at work, but over 10 sq km of rich oak forests have been razed.
“We got word from locals on December 29 afternoon about smoke rising from the forests. We sent a team, but by evening it got too dark and nothing could be done that day,” Kohima DFO Rajkumar M, who is coordinating the ground operations on the Nagaland side, told TOI. “Local youths were stationed there … When the range officer got there next morning, the fire seemed like it was subsiding. But in hours, strong winds fed the fire again.” Every time they try to put out the fire in one area, a change in wind direction redirects the blaze to another. “The fire keeps moving.” The 90-sq km green valley, spread across northern Manipur