Modi’s Red Fort speech to be high on deliverables

A new department for skill development under HRD minister Smriti Irani and the launch of the Clean Ganga project are among the major announcements expected to be made by PM Narendra Modi in his first-ever Independence Day speech on August 15.

Updated on: Aug 12, 2014, 13:47:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A new department for skill development under HRD minister Smriti Irani and the launch of the Clean Ganga project are among the major announcements expected to be made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his first ever Independence Day speech on August 15.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has issued instructions to complete formalities for a nodal office each for the two key projects of Modi. Officials say this would provide fillip for implementation and quicker results as both the programmes are spread across different ministries.

While the skill development for youth is handled by as many as 21 ministries, the programme to clean Ganga is handled by at-least three ministries. And because of the spread, the government was not able to make a department functional even two months after the new government took charge.

Skill development was with the sports and youth affairs ministry headed by Sarbananda Sonowal and Clean Ganga with water resources minister Uma Bharti.

The slow pace in transfer of work has apparently irked the Prime Minister’s Office.

“We have been told at the meeting that August 14 is the deadline for creating the new department for skill development,” a senior government official said, adding that Modi was keen to showcase creation of the department is a big deliverable in his Independence Day speech.

Sources say transferring of National Mission for Clean Ganga to the newly created Department for Ganga Rejuvenation was also facing hurdles as the water resources ministry. There is also no clarity on how the Ganga related projects in the Tourism and Shipping ministries would be handled by the new department headed by water resources minister Uma Bharati.

Notwithstanding these hurdles, the PMO has asked the respective ministries to finalise a clean Ganga plan before Modi’s Independence Day speech.

The execution of the plan is to start before end of this year, officials 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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