Rs 4,500 cr for J&K

Planning Commission earmarks Rs 4,500 crore for Jammu and Kashmir, for the next financial year, Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 12, 2008, 22:43:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Planning Commission on Saturday earmarked Rs 4,500 crore for Jammu and Kashmir, for the next financial year, after a meeting between the commission's deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia and chief minister Gulam Nabi Azad.

Ahluwalia said that the tourism sector was witnessing revival with 6.05 lakh tourists visiting the state in 2005 as compared to just 73,000 in 2001. The state was also asked to give more emphasis on agriculture, conservation of Dal Lake and the catchment area programme.

The commission also drew the state's attention towards shortage of human resources in the health sector and the gender gap in literacy. Improvement in processing facilities in Leh and Kargil was also suggested.

The deputy chairperson said that the growth rate was showing a positive trend. He also praised the power sector reforms. Revision of tariff after two decades and introduction of metering system were steps in the right direction, Ahluwalia 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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