Uttarakhand is seeking an enhanced annual plan size of Rs 6,800 crore for 2010-11 during tomorrow’s meeting between Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia inNew Delhi.
This is 21 per cent more than the last year’s plan size which was fixed at Rs 5,574 crore with additional assistance of Rs 400 crore for ‘mahakumbh’.
Although the infrastructure facilities have not shown any improvement, the government claimed that it has already spent 80 per cent of the plan in various sectors.
This fiscal, the government is seeking Rs 2,971 crore in the economic services which includes infrastructure, transport, industry and agriculture sectors. Last year, Uttrakhand got Rs 2732 cr in the economic services. In the social services, the state is seeking Rs 2256 crore against the last year’s outlay of Rs 1926 crore.
“We are focusing on the infrastructure this time to improve the connectivity in the hill state,” said Planning Minister Prakash Pant.
Meanwhile, the Opposition parties including the Congress have asked the government to improve the infrastructure in the state saying it was high time that the government should shift focus on development instead of merely doing lip service. Experts said the situation is particularly bad in the public private partnership (PPP) projects which have failed to make headway. The government must curtail its ballooning non-plan expenditures, they said.
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Experts said Uttarakhand needed to give higher priority to infrastructure development as future growth would depend critically on the rapid development of this sector. This was even more important if the emphasis was on inclusive growth, since there was a direct link between the availability of infrastructure facilities in the backward regions and the standard of living of the people living there, they aver.
In the last year’s meeting also, Ahluwalia had asked the government to focus its attention on education and health sector and policy initiatives should aim at promoting public private partnership to accelerate pace and generate human capital that is a critical input into the development process.