10 Indian beaches including one in Udupi to be converted into global quality

coastaldigest.com news network
January 29, 2018

Udupi, Jan 29: The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change plans to convert India’s 10 popular sea beaches into international quality Blue Flag destination in 2018 to ensure cleanliness and safety of these beaches. Among the 10 beaches, Padukere Beach located near Malpe in Karnataka’s Udupi district has been listed on the Blue Flag list.

Welcoming the move, Karnataka tourism Director Manjula said that her department already had listed Padukere beach as it fits into most of 33 categories listed by the ministry to select.

All the coastal states have nominated the pilot beaches. Formal nominations are, however, awaited from Union territories like Daman and Diu, Puducherry, Lakshadweep and Andaman and Nicobar islands. Sources said that Andaman would be the only place from where two beaches might be selected for the Blue Flag certification.

These ten beaches are being taken up as demonstration projects. Once they are cleaned up, 90 more beaches would be turned into Blue Flag zones.

The Blue Flag is a certification by the Foundation for Environmental Education to ensure following a set of stringent standards to clean up the popular seaside destinations.

None of the Indian beaches carry this certification, while Spain has 578 Blue Flag beaches. Other countries with a large number of Blue Flag beaches are Turkey (436), Greece (395), Italy (342) and Portugal (299).

The developmental activities along the beach would include the creation of toilets and proper management of the waste material generated by tourists.

According to the existing Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) regulations, developmental activities are permitted in CRZ-2 (urban) and CRZ-3 (rural) areas. However, construction is prohibited in the CRZ-1 areas, which is they are between the high tide line and low tide line along the 7,500 km coastline.

International tourists

Pramod Madhwaraj, Karnataka Minister for Fisheries, Youth Empowerment and Sports, and Udupi district in-charge said that getting the certification would help in attracting international tourists to the beach.

An amount of Rs. 69 lakh had been spent to improve the road connectivity to Padukere. The construction of toilets and gazebos would be taken up at Padukere beach.

The beach facing the Arabian Sea, separated from Malpe fisheries harbour by the Udyavara rivulet, had now got road connectivity from Malpe. Hence efforts were being made to develop both the beaches.

A large number of youth in Malpe were dependent on fisheries. But tourism was a growing sector. The objective was also to create employment opportunities in the tourism sector.

The Malpe beach, the St. Mary’s Island (about 6.5 km from Malpe) and the Padukere beach along with the Sea Walkway will attract more tourists here and facilitate the development of tourism, Mr. Madhwaraj said.

Also Read: Karnataka’s first Sea Walkway opens to public at Malpe

Comments

Hari
 - 
Monday, 29 Jan 2018

What were the criterias for selecteing pilot beaches? Is that most polluted beaches? They will expand to all beaches in Karnataka?

Kumar
 - 
Monday, 29 Jan 2018

Great project. People also should cooperate to this project. Without them proper implementation wont happen

Ganesh
 - 
Monday, 29 Jan 2018

Great news. It will give more mileage to beach tourism in Karnataka

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News Network
May 8,2020

Kochi, May 8: Five people, who were among 181 individuals evacuated from Abu Dhabi, have been sent to the isolation ward of the district hospital after they displayed symptoms of coronavirus during thermal screening.

The first repatriation Air India Express flight with 181 individuals from Abu Dhabi landed at Cochin International Airport here on Thursday.

Among the returnees, 49 women were pregnant and four were children. They have been home-quarantine.

Meanwhile, the rest have been taken to quarantine centres in their respective districts.

The Air India Express flight IX452 to Kochi with 177 passengers and four infants took off from Abu Dhabi International Airport and touched down at Kochi post 10 pm.

The government has made it mandatory for foreign returnees to be quarantined for 14 days, either in a hospital or in an institutional quarantine on payment-basis, by the concerned state government.

A COVID-19 test would be done after 14 days and further action would be taken according to health protocols.

India on Monday began phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad due to coronavirus lockdown.

The government said that Air India will operate 64 flights from May 7 to May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals stranded abroad amid the COVID-19-induced lockdown.

Starting from 7 May, 64 flights will take off for 12 countries including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Maldives, Singapore and the US.

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News Network
May 5,2020

Bengaluru, May 5: A 62-year-old woman from Vijayapura succumbed to coronavirus infection on Tuesday, taking the COVID-19 death toll in Karnataka to 28, a health official said.

The state has registered eight more COVID-19 cases in the past 19 hours, increasing the count of such cases to 659, the official added.

"Positive case 640, 62-year-old female resident of Vijayapura died on Tuesday due to cardiac arrest," the health official said.

Admitted to a designated hospital''s ICU on Sunday, the woman was also suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Bronchial Asthma (BA) and complained of breathlessness.

Among the eight fresh cases that emerged in the state, four were contacts of earlier cases, two with Influenza Like Illness (ILI) and one with travel history to Uttarakhand.

The health department is also tracing the contact history of a 30-year-old woman from Bengaluru Urban.

Incidentally, no new cases emerged from Davangere as 22 cases rocked the district on Monday.

Among the new cases, Bengaluru Urban contributed 3, followed by Bagalkote, 2, Ballari, Dakshina Kannada and Bhatkal in Uttara Kannada, 1 each.

Of the new cases, six are men and two women.

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News Network
January 5,2020

Bengaluru, Jan 5: Former Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara has said the Karnataka Congress has unanimously decided to appeal to the party high command regarding the appointment of KPCC President and Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader in the state.

Speaking to reporters, the Congress leader said, "We have decided to gather the opinion of senior leaders regarding the selection of Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president and opposition leaders. We will appeal to the high command regarding the same. The party will decide its next course of action."

He made these remarks after a meeting of senior party leaders was held at Parameshwara's residence here on Saturday.

Adding that the Congress leaders discussed the current political scenario in the state, Parameshwara said: "We held a meeting to reiterate that we are not confused and we all are together."

"There has been no personal discussion on who should be the president," he said.

Earlier, KPCC president Dinesh Gundu Rao and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had tendered resignation from their respective posts owning moral responsibility for the party's poor performance in the recent by-polls.

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