Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha Wednesday said that Jammu and Kashmir would see massive infrastructural development across all sectors in the next one year.
Speaking on a host of issues on Zee Salaam’s special programme ‘Naya Savera’ with Zee Salam’s editor, Deepak Tiwari, the Lt Governor outlined the goal of establishing a responsive, citizen-centric administrative setup and accentuating the infrastructure across all sectors in J&K with special focus on connectivity, health and education sectors.
The Lt Governor spoke on the length and breadth of the government’s initiatives for bringing development and prosperity in J&K and observed that the highest-ever budget was envisaged for J&K to make it a model of development.
At Rs 1,08,621 crore, the budget surpasses all previous allocations and 37 percent of the earmarked budget would be spent on development and infrastructure projects, the Lt Governor said.
For revamping the power sector in J&K, short-term, medium-term and long-term measures are being taken and in the coming two years J&K would get quality power supply round the clock, he said.
Regarding the development of education and health sector, the LG said that the health facilities in J&K had seen significant improvement.
He said that seven new medical colleges and hospitals, 2 AIIMS, 2 cancer institutes, bone institutes and child hospitals are being established in J&K.
Under the New Industrial Development Scheme, a provision of Medicity and Educity is also kept for providing better medical facilities through private hospitals, the LG said.
He said that J&K was the only region in the country which has IIT, IIM, two AIIMS and two Central Universities.
LG Sinha said that the task force had been made to implement the New Education Policy. For revamping the school education and promoting vocational courses, 607 vocational labs have been set up in schools across J&K. There has been a significant increase in the number of enrollment in government-run schools and higher education institutes, the LG said.
He said that people of J&K were talented and had huge potential and that they lacked platforms, which were now being made available to them.
“Keeping in view the developmental aspirations of the people of J&K and for providing smart transportation, metro projects in Srinagar and Jammu cities will be completed in three years. Two IT towers, each in Jammu and Srinagar will come up in the next 16 months to develop the Information Technology sector and to provide platforms to the young technological talents of J&K enabling them to work in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and 3D printing. We are also focusing on establishing facilities like data centres which are significant to meet modern times requirements,” the Lt Governor said. On the significance of public participation in the governance process, he said that dedicated efforts were being made to put a mechanism in place so that people of J&K could have their say in the developmental process.