Uddhav praises Gadkari for asking state govts to complete road projects

Adityanath in the lead

In the lockdown period, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath (pictured) has emerged a trailblazer for his counterparts by finding ways to circumvent the Centre’s guidelines. Even as inter-state movements of people were not allowed, the UP government had evacuated its people in Delhi by the end of March by sending its buses. Subsequently, it was also the first government to send its buses to other states, including Rajasthan, to evacuate its students in Kota, and another 12,000 workers from Haryana. On Tuesday, Adityanath asked his officials to prepare the soil for opening industries in the state’s green and orange zones after May 3. The state is also preparing for a spurt in cases and asked all districts to put in place quarantine centres to accommodate 15,000-25,000 patients.

Hindi please

Kamal Patel, the newly-appointed Agriculture Minister of Madhya Pradesh, has issued an order that henceforth all departmental directives should be issued in the official language, that is Hindi, and in intelligible language. On Tuesday, Patel wrote to Principal Secretary Ajeet Kesari: ‘‘In Madhya Pradesh we plan all the schemes for our farmers. It’s important to draft all official communications and guidelines in easy Hindi.” The minister said all instructions should reach farmers, for whom they were designed. Earlier too, he had said if there was an impasse between farmers and agriculture officials, it was because of the medium of communication used rather than the scheme/measure itself.

Uddhav’s message

Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari has reached out to different stakeholders, including opposition politicians, in the past one month. On Sunday, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray praised Gadkari for asking everyone to look beyond his or her political interests and support the state government in the midst of Covid-19. Thackeray made this comment in Marathi and said he was repeating it in Hindi so that the message reached the central leadership. There have been numerous gazette notifications from Gadkari’s ministry on land acquisition and other related issues to expedite work on national highways, bridges and flyovers. He has also asked all state governments, including some non-BJP ones, to execute road construction projects during this time, when traffic was low, and thus offer work to people.