PM Office meets Rahul half way on Bundelkhand

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) on Monday approved a Rs 30,000 crore (Rs 300 billion) special development plan for the poverty-hit Bundelkhand region of central India, covering parts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Updated on: Sep 15, 2009, 24:24:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) on Monday approved a Rs 30,000 crore (Rs 300 billion) special development plan for the poverty-hit Bundelkhand region of central India, covering parts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

But the PMO failed to decide on the Bundelkhand Authority, proposed by Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi.

Gandhi had met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last month and sought a package of Rs 8,000 crore (Rs 80 billion) and a development authority for the region that, for decades, has been known for dacoities, drought and starvation deaths.

A large barren, hilly region, Bundelkhand has become the latest political battlefield for the Congress and the Bhaujan Samaj Party (BSP).

What it has got now from the Centre is much more than what Gandhi demanded, with a clear indication that all proposals will be directly implemented by the central government.

State-owned National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) will build a 4,000 MW power plant at Lalitpur in Madhya Pradesh and the Ken-Betwa river-linking project between two states will get central funding, an official said, after a meeting called by Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister T.K.A. Nair on Monday.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

NTPC has been asked to do the feasibility study of the project, which will cost Rs 20,000 crore, and the water resources ministry is expected to draw up a financial plan for the Ken-Betwa project, the official said.

The PMO issued instructions to the agriculture and water resources ministries to bring proposals on agriculture and agri-education.

The agriculture ministry has been asked to submit a proposal for a central agriculture university to cater for needs of the drought-hit region. "The university will provide research inputs to farmers on alternative crops for the region, requiring small quantities of water," the official 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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