DW BUREAU / Chandigarh Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Wednesday launched a Direct Seeding of Rice (DSR) portal to facilitate the farmers to give their willingness for area to be sown with DSR technology here at his official residence. Highly lauding this farmer friendly initiative, Bhagwant Mann said that it would be instrumental to compile the entire data about each and every farmer, who has opted for DSR technique besides ensuring payment of Rs. 1500 per acre after proper verification through this portal to the genuine beneficiaries in a fair and transparent manner. Apprising the Chief Minister about the modalities of aforementioned portal, Additional Chief Secretary Agriculture said that after proper verification, the incentive amount of Rs.1500 per acre would be directly transferred into the bank accounts of the respective farmers. Notably, this unique portal has been developed and designed by Mandi Board in sync with the Agriculture Department. With the adoption of this innovative technology there would be at least 15-20% saving of water besides helping in effective percolation of water ultimately improving the ground water level through proper recharging. This cost effective technique would also cut-down the labour cost by nearly Rs. 4000 per acre. The state government has already deployed 3000 officers/officials of various departments including Agriculture, Horticulture, Mandi Board and Water & Soil Conservation to oversee the DSR operations meticulously for imparting proper technical guidance to the farmers as well as undertaking verification of the area sown under this advanced technology so as to ensure that the payment of Rs. 1500 per acre is only made to the genuine beneficiaries. It may be recalled that the farmers from across the state are expected to cultivate paddy including Basmati over an area of 30 lakh hectares (75 lakh acres) during this Kharif season. As per available data, paddy was sown last year in an area of 15 lakh acres (6 lakh hectares) through DSR and during this season the state government has fixed the target of 30 lakh acres under the new technique. Prominent amongst others who attended the meeting included; Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema, Chief Secretary Anirudh Tewari, Additional Chief Secretary to CM A. Venu Prasad, ACS Agriculture Sarvjit Singh, ACS Finance KAP Sinha and Director Agriculture Gurvinder Singh. Punjab govt to present paperless budget Chandigarh Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Wednesday said his government will present a paperless budget which will save Rs 21 lakh of the state exchequer, besides saving 34 tonne of paper. Mann described it as a step towards e-governance. "Good news for the people of Punjab... My government has decided that there will be a paperless budget this time. With this, around Rs 21 lakh of the state exchequer will be saved?34 tonne paper will be saved.. it means it will save 814-834 trees?another step towards e-Governance..," said Mann in a tweet in Punjabi. Notably, the Punjab assembly in March had passed a vote-on-account for the first three months, April till June, of the financial year 2022-23.The Aam Aadmi Party came to power in March after winning 92 of the 117 Punjab assembly segments in the state./ PTI / (editor@dailyworld.in)