People may have to take permission for boring to fetch water

Bihar government is contemplating putting a mechanism under which people will have to take prior permission for boring/sinking to fetch ground water in urban areas to conserve the ground water table.
"Though there is no problem of ground water table in Bihar except in hilly areas, but we'll regulate the water in order to conserve it in urban areas...People will have to take permission to sink to fetch ground water," Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh told reporters here.
Singh, however, made it clear that there was neither any immediate plan nor any decision taken to implement it, but it is actively considering to implement a policy to manage water as mandated under the Bihar Groundwater Regulation and Management Act 2006.

Talking about the deaths caused by lightning incidents in the state, Singh said that the government was working on a plan to introduce an "mobile phone App" which would alert people in advance about lightning strike in a particular area.
"I have seen the App being in practice in Andhra Pradesh. It is working quite well. It alerts people 30 minutes in advance about the place where lightining will strike," Singh said.
People would have to download the "App" and once it is downloaded, they would get an SMS alert on their handsets, he added.
It will take another 3-4 months to introduce the "App" for the people in the state, he said adding that the App had become a necessity in the backdrop of large number of deaths being caused by lightining strike.

The App will prove to be much cheaper too for the state government as it has to shell out Rs 4 lakh each to the next of the kin killed in the lightning strike, Singh said.