A Meeting of State Innovation Council was held here today under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Shri P. Mitra. The Council reviewed and approved the schemes worth Rs. 2 crores funded from the State Innovation Fund during the last three years. Some of the Innovative projects under the fund included Document Management System for Ration Card Forms, Online Planning permission-Web Portal Project of TCP, Manimahesh Yatra Registration of Pilgrims and Video Conferencing facilities for Tribal Circles of PWD.
The Council also approved the innovations recommended by the sectoral committees for award under HP State Innovation Award Scheme 2014-15. As many as 27 proposals were received by the Council and it approved innovation awards in three sectors which include agriculture & horticulture, academic sector and social development sector.
Under Agriculture & Horticulture sector the award was approved for Localized Generic para Pheromone based bottle trap, effective against fruit flies developed by Dr. P.K. Mehta, Dr. Pankaj Sood & Dr. C.S Prabhakar of Department of Entomology, CSK, HP KVV, Palampur. This bottle trap has helped the farmers in saving their crops against the attack of fruit flies without using chemicals and with a little cost of about Rs. 100 per trap.
The award under academic sector was approved for innovation in Pocket size guidelines “Himachal Pradesh ke Jilon ke liye Bhukamp Pratirodi Gair Engineering Bhawan Nirman Marg Nirdeshika” of Dr. Hemant Kumar Vinayak, Assistant Professor (Civil Engineering), NIT Hamirpur for developing specific non-engineering guidelines for earthquake safe construction. These guidelines would assist the masons and other skilled/semi skilled workers during construction work.
The Council approved another award under Social Development Sector for Low cost bio-sand filter of Dr. Anil Sharma, Director, Social Awareness through human involvement (SATHI), NGO for developing bio- sand filter technology, a cost effective technology for domestic water filtration. This technology has resulted in a significant reduction in the rate of water borne diseases in certain rural pockets of Sirmaur district.
The State Innovation Council decided to expand the horizon of Innovation related activities.
Chief Secretary said that the last date of nominations for H.P. Innovation Awards for 2015-16 had been extended up to 31st March, 2016. He said that the details about the scheme were available in the website of Planning Department.