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Home minister Amit Shah to visit Ferozepur, Amritsar on Sept 26
Shah will chair the NZC meeting that will be attended by the chief ministers of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh, besides the lieutenant governors of the Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh and the Chandigarh administrator along with their delegations
Union home minister Amit Shah will be visiting Punjab’s border district of Ferozepur on September 26 to inaugurate the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research’s satellite centre before heading to Amritsar to attend the North Zone Council (NZC) meeting.
Punjab BJP chief Sunil Jakhar announced Shah’s visit to Ferozepur at a press conference in Chandigarh on Friday.
Shah will chair the NZC meeting that will be attended by the chief ministers of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh, besides the lieutenant governors of the Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh and the Chandigarh administrator along with their delegations. Apart from the security situation, the issue of drug smuggling is expected to figure prominently at the meeting.
“The PGI satellite centre is a long pending demand of not only Ferozepur natives but also of the entire Malwa belt,” said Jakhar.
“We have initiated the process to make adequate arrangements regarding the visit of the Union home minister, even though we are awaiting official confirmation,” quoted Ferozepur deputy commissioner Rajesh Dhiman.
It is pertinent to mention that the much-hyped PGI satellite centre in Ferozepur hangs fire though it was approved in 2013 by the UPA-II government to boost modernised healthcare facilities in the border region.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to lay the foundation stone of the ₹500-crore PGI satellite centre in Ferozepur on January 5 last year, but the PM had to return due to the farmers’ protest.
Later, Shah, while addressing the locals during the recently held state polls, promised to virtually lay the foundation of this project on Baisakhi, but the event wasn’t held and another event scheduled for July 23 this year got delayed.
The SAD-BJP government initially gave nod to the proposal mooted by the financial commissioner (development) in 2014 to allot 25-acre gram panchayat land at Wajidpur village to the local horticulture department in exchange for their land to be given for the PGI centre at Malwal village on the Ferozepur-Moga highway, but the proposal could not materialise.
Thereafter, the state authorities transferred the 16-acre land of the ITI ground to the health department, but later the PGI authorities demanded 5.5-acre more land for the construction of houses for doctors and other staff, which was also approved in February 2016, but even then, the construction could not start.
Meanwhile in 2017, with the change of guard, the Congress government again mooted the process to relocate the land at Malwal village to tackle the issue of traffic chaos and its adverse effect on the emergency treatment. In December 2021, the construction of boundary wall of the centre commenced.
Punjab Youth Congress ex-president joins BJP
Meanwhile, former Punjab Youth Congress president Akshay Sharma quit the party to join the BJP at Jakhar’s press meet.
Earlier, posting the announcement on social media, Sharma accused the Congress of promoting “sycophancy and incompetence”.
His resignation comes over a month after the party appointed Mohit Mohindra, the son of veteran Congress leader and former minister Brahm Mohindra, as the new Punjab Youth Congress president. Mohit’s name was announced by IYC national president BV Srinivas after he got 2.4 lakh votes against Sharma, who got 1.75 lakh votes. Sharma was appointed vice-president of the state unit last month.
