The Centre has given a special grant of Rs 131.71 crore to Uttarakhand for innovations in agriculture sector under the national agriculture development programme.
The grant will be for long term projects which can be developed over a period of 18 months, top officials said today.
Last year, the grant was only Rs 1 crore for the hill state. “It is very amazing that we have got such a big grant from the Centre for the agriculture sector this time,” said the official.
Significantly, the grant comes at a time when Harish Rawat, who is a Lok Sabha member from Uttarakhand, was recently given the new responsibility as the union minister of state for agriculture at the Centre.
“We will shortly convene a meeting to decide what kind of projects we can take up under the new grant,” said the official. For the year 2011-12, the state government has made a budgetary provision of Rs 271.59 crore for the agriculture sector.