Store nation's urine, end urea import: Gadkari's brainwave
Nagpur, Mar 4: Lamenting that his out-of-box proposals often find no takers, Union minister Nitin Gadkari Sunday voiced another such idea: make urea from urine.
If it is done, India will not need to import fertiliser, he claimed, addressing a gathering of young innovators at the Mayor Innovation Awards function of the Nagpur Municipal Corporation.
Talking about importance of innovation, he gave the example of how bio-fuels can be extracted from natural waste.
Even human urine can be useful for making a bio-fuel and it can also yield ammonium sulfate and nitrogen, he said.
"I have asked for storage of urine at airports. We import urea, but if we start storing urine of entire country then we will not need to import urea, so much potential it has, and nothing will be wasted," the minister said.
"Other people do not cooperate with me because all my ideas are fantastic," the minister, known for his outspoken ways, said.
"Even the (municipal) corporation will not help, because in government, people are trained to be like (blinkered) bulls who walk in the rut, not looking here and there," he said.
Some years ago, Gadkari had created a flutter by saying that he stored his own urine and used it as fertiliser for the garden at his official bungalow in Delhi.
Speaking at the function, he also gave the example of use of amino acid extracted from human hair waste, which can be used as a fertiliser.
It boosted production at his farms by 25 per cent, he claimed.
Because he could not get adequate hair in Nagpur, he had to purchase "five trucks of hair" from Tirupati (where devotees shave their head which are later sold) every month, Gadkari said.
"We are selling amino acid abroad and have order of about 180 containers of bio-fertiliser from the Dubai government," the Union minister, who controls Purti Group of Industries, said.
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MP boat tragedy: Death toll climbs to 13; body of last missing person recovered
Jabalpur (PTI): The bodies of a five-year-old boy and his uncle were recovered from Bargi Dam in Madhya Pradesh's Jabalpur district on Sunday morning, raising the death toll in the cruise boat tragedy to 13, police said.
The boat, around 20 years old and operated by the state tourism department, capsized during a storm on Thursday evening.
"The bodies of Mayuram (5) and his uncle Kamraj (around 50), an employee of the Ordnance Factory in Khamaria, were found floating and were fished out of the dam," Bargi Sub Divisional Officer of Police Anjul Ayank Mishra told PTI over the phone.
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All 13 missing persons identified have now been accounted for, he said, adding the bodies were sent to a government hospital for postmortem.
Teams comprising around 20 Army divers airlifted from Agra, along with personnel from the National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force and local divers, were involved in the search operation, the police said.
Of the 41 identified passengers on board the vessel, 28 were rescued after the incident, according to the police.
The CCTV footage near the boarding point showed 43 people heading towards the boat, though the identities of 41 passengers have been confirmed so far, they said.
The state government on Friday ordered a probe into the incident and dismissed three crew members. It also banned the operation of similar vessels in the state.
