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Narendra Modi to launch nutrition mission, lay foundation for HPCL refinery in January
The programme through the targets will strive to reduce the level of stunting, under-nutrition, anemia and low birth weight babies.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit Rajasthan twice in January – first on January 14 to lay foundation stone for HPCL refinery at Pachpadra in Barmer district and then on January 22 to launch the National Nutrition Mission (NMM) from Jhunjhunu.
“The all India launch of NMM will take place from Jhunjhunu. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has confirmed the visit,” said an official, who is not authorised to speak to the media.
The union cabinet approved setting up of NNM on December 1, with a three year budget of ₹9,046.17 crore beginning 2017-18. The mission will monitor, supervise, fix targets and guide the nutrition related interventions across the ministries.
The proposal consists of mapping of various schemes contributing towards addressing malnutrition and includes introducing a robust convergence mechanism, IT-based real time monitoring system and incentivising states for meeting the targets apart from incentivizing anganwadi workers for using IT-based tools.
The programme through the targets will strive to reduce the level of stunting, under-nutrition, anemia and low birth weight babies. All the states and districts will be covered in a phased manner – 315 in 2017-18, 235 in 2018-19 and remaining in 2019-20.
Modi is also expected to lay the foundation stone of Barmer refinery-cum-petrochemical complex at Pachpadra in Barmer district on the occasion of Makar Sanranti on January 14. He will be accompanied by Union minister for petroleum and natural gas Dharmendra Pradhan.
The state machinery has swung into action and Barmer district collector Shivprasad Nakate visited the site on Wednesday to take stock of the situation and held meeting with the officials concerned. At present, construction of boundary wall is in progress at the refinery site. The refinery is expected to become operational in about four years.
According to the agreement, the HPCL has a 74 percent stake, while the state government holds a 26 percent stake in the new firm, which is called HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Limited (HRRL). The total cost of the project is ₹43,129 crore.
Chief minister Vasundhara Raje at the time of signing of the MoU had said that new agreement led to significant saving of ₹40,000 crore. Also, the state would receive 12 percent return on investment instead of earlier 2 percent mentioned in the agreement signed by the erstwhile Congress government.
