“Congress MLAs boycotting the ongoing Gujarat assembly session in Gandhinagar for last six days, regularly sign the attendance register just for Rs 200 daily allowance,” BJP MLA Pradipsinh Jadeja said this in the assembly yesterday, suggesting that such MLAs ‘on boycott’ should not get allowance from public money.

Gujarat Health Minister Jaynarayan Vyas supported the feelings expressed by Pradipsinh Jadeja and added, “The Congress members sign the register but don’t bother to participate in very important budget discussion that shapes the progress of the state. They are doing all this in the name of Gandhi, but then they should follow Gandhi and should not sign the register for getting full allowances, if they are on boycott as per what they say in the public.”

Chief Minister Modi’s appeal to the people of Gujarat

Recently there has been an unfortunate tragedy, because of which Gujarat has shocked, and personally I also feel great pain.

Having anger in reaction to this tragedy as a citizen is natural and I have total sympathy towards victim families. My condolences are with them.

I promise the citizens of Gujarat, that my government is determined to go to the roots of this problem and those responsible will get unimaginable penalty. The government will give no concession in this. But we don’t want to stop there, because this problem has always ruined the lives of poor people. I don’t want to raise a discussion on what happened and not happened under whose government in past.

When Hemant Kumar started his IT firm with an overhead of about Rs 30,000, and two employees, including himself, at the end of May last year, he possibly had no idea that the world would face its biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

By mid-September, Lehman Brothers had collapsed, and the global meltdown had begun. But less than a month later, his company, Zaptech Solutions, began getting orders for web-designs from the US.

From four employees in the first week of October, Kumar’s small firm has now grown to its present employee strength of 12.

While almost every industry is either stagnating or growing at a snail’s pace, IT Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are growing at a healthy rate in Gujarat.

In the last weekend of June, Gujarat Electronics and Software Industries Association (GESIA) organised a job fair. Thirteen companies and over 7,000 people participated and a number of Gujarat-based SMEs recruited “close to 400” applicants directly, according to Nariv Shah, president of GESIA.

“Some companies could recruit on-the-spot because they have BPO and other back-office jobs to offer, and all they need to know is whether an applicant has strong language skills, which can be done on the spot,” he said.

Government run Kidney Hospital has one kidney transplant a day which makes it number one hospital in the world. Making this claim, Gujarat Health Minister Jay Narayan Vyas said that Gujarat had 118 cadaver transplants which was also a world record.

Replying to a question in the State Assembly, Vyas said that in the last two years there were 980 cases of kidney transplant in the state of which 767 were in Ahmedabad alone. He said that efforts were being made to declare the Kidney hospital in Ahmedabad a centre for excellence.

There are seven hospitals in Gujarat with the facility of kidney transplant. Of these five are in Ahmedabad, one in Nadiad and one in Vadodara