Central fund for UP to go up by over 20%

Annual plan for Uttar Pradesh would go up by over 20% compared to average of about 10% in the last five financial years even as the Samajwadi Party and the Centre are cosying up to each other.

Updated on: Jul 10, 2012, 21:58:40 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Annual plan for Uttar Pradesh would go up by over 20% compared to average of about 10% in the last five financial years even as the Samajwadi Party and the Centre are cosying up to each other.

SP’s support had enabled the UPA to clinch the Presidential race in its favour recently.

In yet another politically significant gesture, the plan also includes financial support for free laptop scheme, which was a key election promise of the incumbent SP government in UP. In addition, the Centre would be extenting the Bundelkhand financial package for another three years after a review later this month.

The Centre also approved construction of 3.86 lakh homes for rural poor, Rs. 500 crore for piped water supply, Rs. 922 crore for capitalization of gramin (village) banks and additional allocation of three lakh tones of urea. The Centre is also looking at a possibility of funding for recharge of ground water in 108 drought hit blocks and Rs. 1,100 crore for rural roads.

According to senior government officials, the Centre is willing to help the state in improving the road, electricity distribution and education infrastructure. It wants the state government to adopt revamped Unique Identification Number enabled Public Distribution System (PDS), for which the Central government will provide resources.

A blue-print of what the state government will get was decided at a meeting between principal secretary to PM, Pulak Chatterjee and UP chief secretary Javed Usmani, in which secretaries of all key Central ministries participated.

The over three hour long meeting had quick decisions with the Centre agreeing to fund some aspects of the Rs. 90,000 crore package demanded by UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav immediately and others in coming financial years. “No such meeting where decisions were taken so fast had taken at a PMO regarding UP in the last decade,” said a senior planning commission official Different ministries have been asked to finalise the plans with the UP government in the coming weeks. Thereafter, a meeting between panel’s deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Yadav is expected once the Presidential elections get over on July 25, sources said.

On the other hand, the Central government’s largesse to West Bengal is expected to end after state chief minister and Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee refused to back Mukherjee. “The state government has got additional funding…it is time for them to show results,” a senior government functionary said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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