CM Sarbananda Sonowal Raises Key Issues, Sets State’s Development Roadmap

GUWAHATI: Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, on Saturday, raised key issues pertinent to the State’s development and underlined the future roadmap for a State and Central government’s partnership at the fifth Governing Council Meeting of the NITI Aayog held at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In his speech, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal stressed on the need for effective management of flood and erosion problems afflicting a large part of the State every year. He pointed out that the norms of relief and rehabilitation provided to the flood-affected people as per the SDRF guidelines are low, and urged for substantially increasing funds for prevention, mitigation, preparedness and rehabilitation after natural calamities. The Chief Minister also strongly vouched for NITI Aayog’s intervention to include river erosion in the admissible list of calamities for funding under NDRF or SDRF so that quick and timely steps can be taken to counter erosion.

Thanking the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Central Government for setting up a high- level committee for proper management of water resources in the north-eastern region under the chairmanship of the Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog, the Chief Minister opined that suggestions made in the draft report of the committee would go a long way in finding a permanent solution to the problems of flood and erosion in Assam.

Chief Minister Sonowal also informed that the State government had made remarkable progress in addressing the needs of the seven selected aspirational districts of the State and an amount of Rs 28 crore had been kept in the State Budget of the current financial year for taking up new activities in those districts. He also referred to Hailakandi district’s achievement of being ranked first among the aspirational district in India for which Rs. 10 crore was awarded to the district.

Pointing out that many farmers were being deprived of benefits of various farmer welfare measures because of not possessing the required land right certificates, Sonowal highlighted the State government’s endeavour to distribute land pattas to one lakh farmer families within the current financial year. In order to achieve Prime Minister Modi’s target of doubling the farmers’ income by 2022 in the State, satisfactory results were shown in the implementation of the Chief Minister’s Samagra Gramya Unnayan Yojana that was launched by the State government in 2017 with an outlay of Rs. 30,000, he informed.

Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal also referred to the law-and-order situation of the State during his speech, stated a release.

Saying that there was urgent need to update the data for providing benefits of flagship programmes of the Central government like the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Grameen, Ujjwala, Swachh Bharat etc, the Chief Minister remarked that the data sourced from the ‘Socio-Economic Caste Census-2011’ for these schemes did not provide an adequate picture about the genuine beneficiaries of present times as some people might have moved out from poverty categories and on the other hand, new people might be eligible for inclusion.

The Chief Minister also urged for taking steps to provide required funds to the ‘anchalik panchayats’ and ‘zila parishads’ for their holistic development under the 15th Finance Commission. He also expressed optimism that the next Finance Commission would provide funds for development of the Sixth Schedule Council areas of the State.

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