Srinagar: The budget 2023-24 would give a major infrastructural push to four core areas of health, drinking water, power and road connectivity aimed at providing succour to the common people and improving developmental parameters of J&K at the national level.
An official spokesman in a statement issued here said that the budget had earmarked funds for providing Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTCs) to all 18.36 lakh households of J&K by 2023-24 with a minimum of 55 litres per capita per day (LPCD) drinking water supply of prescribed quality (confirming to BIS 10,500) on a regular, long-term, and sustainable basis.
He said that about 60 water supply schemes were likely to be completed during 2023-24.
The spokesman said that to bring efficiency in planning and revenue collection, the government would introduce digitalisation of consumer records and implementation of an online billing system in entire J&K.
He said that the construction of the prestigious Tawi barrage, an artificial lake project, which would boost tourism of Jammu City, would be completed during 2023-24.
According to the budget document, 6000 km of blacktopping of roads is expected to be achieved during 2023-24 under all schemes.
The spokesman said that 353 new projects worth Rs 1292 crore had been prioritised to be sanctioned under Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF)-XXVIII with NABARD funding.
He said that in the last year’s budget, safety audit of bridges having completed 20 years was completed and now in this budget safety audit for the bridges having completed 10 years had to be conducted during 2023-24.
The spokesman said that the J&K government was also putting efforts on maintenance of road and bridge assets and also for road safety measures.
He said that the year 2023-24 would see further improvement in daily hours of power supply with urban 24 hours and rural 22 hours besides a reduction in transformer damage rate, a drop in Transmission and Distribution (T&D) and Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses.
The spokesman said that under the budget 2023-24, there would be an additional length of Low Tension (LT) and High Tension (HT) network (1324.073 km) besides renovation and modernisation works would be undertaken at existing 220/132 KV Grid Sub Stations apart from protection and replacement works at critical towers and insertion of new towers.
He said that to improve power connectivity in remote areas that receive heavy snowfall, Sonamarg would be provided 24×7 power supply during winters with underground cabling through Z-Morh Tunnel besides underground cabling would be done at Nunwan for reliable power supply to Amarnath Cave shrine.