Rs. 56,000-cr bonanza for Akhilesh's dream plans

Plan panel to hike outlay for schemes such as laptops and Rs 1,000 unemployment bonus, with some riders. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 18, 2012, 24:56:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Uttar Pradesh government's laptop scheme, unemployment bonus of Rs. 1,000 per month and free homes to scheduled castes is set to get the Central government's stamp with some conditions.

The Planning Commission is likely to approve eight new schemes for Samajwadi Party government UP on Wednesday when the state chief minister Akhilesh Yadav would meeting senior plan panel officials including deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

The planning commission has agreed to provide Rs. 1,000 unemployment allowance to matric pass youth in the age group of 30 to 40 years provided the state government fixes either the income criteria or unemployment allowances for the below poverty line families. The allowance will cost Rs. 396 crore in the current financial year.

Another ambitious scheme of the state government - to provide tablets to pass-outs of class X and XII --- also has the panel's in-principle approval with an allocation of Rs. 975 crore likely to be provided in the annual plan expected to be of Rs. 56,000 crore. It would be about 19.15 % % higher than the plan of Rs. 47,000 crore for the financial year 2011-12.

In addition to this, the state government's renewed emphasis on social sector would get a go-ahead. A new pre-matric scholarship for the scheduled caste students in on the anvil. The panel is expected to double the outlay for welfare of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and minorities in the annual plan.

Uttar Pradesh's two townships neighbouring Delhi - Noida and Greater Noida - is also expected to get higher allocation from the Central government. The panel is expected to allocate Rs. 4,300 crore for these two townships as against Rs. 3,800 crore in the last financial year.

The panel is expected to emphasise on the need to reduce infant and maternal mortality rate and improve overall literacy rate and GDP growth. It also wants the state government to improve performance of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and women participation in it, official sources 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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