Jamnagar Amreli Surat District Tourism News Saurashtra Gujarat India

Two consultants bid for tourist beach development in Saurashtra Gujarat India.

Two firms have bid for offering consultancy services to Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) for the development of tourist beaches at Sarkeshwar in Amreli District and Shivrajpur in Jamnagar District. The architecture consultancy firms, who bid for tourist beaches development, are Hiren Gandhi & Associates and Wapcos India, a flagship company of union ministry of water resources.

On behalf of Gujarat Ports Infrastructure and Development Co Ltd, GMB had invited consultants for advising the board for development of tourist beaches in Gujarat. The last date for submission of bids was 30 November and the maritime board has received total three bids for development of two tourist beaches.

"Wapcos India and Hiren Gandhi & Associates have evinced interest in offering their consultancy to GMB. Two bids have been received for Sarkeshwar beach and one bid is for Shivrajpur, which is located between Dwarka and Okha," said a senior GMB official.

The successful bidders will be involved in overall planning of tourist beach development. "The firms will help GMB chalk out long term planning for overall development. They will advise us as to what infrastructure is required for the project and how the entire project would be implemented," the GMB official added.

The tourist beach development project will probably be carried out on public private partnership (PPP) basis. In fact, GMB intends to develop tourist beach at Savli and Doomas near Surat District. Shivrajpur has clean blue water with potential to become one of the best beaches.

According to sources, around Rs. 200 crore will be spent on developing these beaches.

Jamnagar District News Samachar Gujarat India

Further delay in rains harmful for crops: Irrigation dept.

Rains have given the state a miss in August as well and a further delay will lead to damage to crops. Farmers are now resorting to drawing water not only form check dams but also from main irrigation dams with nearly 96 percent sowing completed.

Irrigation department officials said that 5461 million cubic feet (MCFT) of water has been released from dams since July 30. According to data there was 238518.21 MCFT of water on July 30, but since August 19, water in the dams has reduced to 233056.75 MCFT, a fall of 5461 MCFT. They added that this decrease was only from the major irrigation dams as data for check dams was not available.

Any further delay in rains will definitely affect ground nut and cotton crops, adding that, if there was a good spell in the next couple of days it would ensure a bumper crop.

CA Patel, deputy director, irrigation says, "There is no fear of crop failure, however, further delay of monsoon will definitely deteriorate the quality of crop."

According to data available cotton has the highest sowing area of 25.84 lakh hectares. A senior officer said maximum sowing was done in Surendranagar district with 7.12 lakh hectares.

Other areas where major sowing was done included Rajkot (7.07 lakh ha), Jamnagar (6.07 lakh ha), Amreli (5.51 lakh ha) and Bhavnagar (5.44 lakh ha) and Banaskantha (5.34 lakh ha). Of the 25 districts, there were three districts where sowing was below 1 lakh hectares. In Ahmedabad district, the sowing was around 4.34 lakh hectares. Officials said Saurashtra and Kutch account for over 55 per cent of total sowing in the state.