Niti Aayog Agreed to Guide the State for Development Master Plan
New Delhi
Niti Aayog agreed to guide the state for its development master plan, after a meeting with Arunachal Chief Minister Pema Khandu with the Ayog Vice-Chairman Dr Arvind Panagariya at New Delhi on Monday. During an hour long meeting, Pema raised several important issues pertaining to the state’s development. He apprised Vice Chairman Niti Aayog about the state’s recurring problem of heavy rain triggered flood causing huge damage to property, infrastructure and livestock every year during the monsoon.
“Due to the turbulent nature of rivers triggered by torrential rainfalls, flood water created havocs in entire parts of the state. He informed that the current floods has affected more than 47 villages in the state and rendered thousands of people homeless besides damaging public and private properties” he informed.
CM requested the Niti Aayog to provide fund under a Special Window of funding for reconstruction and maintenance of critical infrastructure such as highway transmission damaged by floods, landslides and other natural calamities while citing that the National Disaster Response Force and State Disaster Response Force does not cover funds for reconstruction and major maintenance of damaged public and private properties as per the laid down norms.
For the long term strategy CM also requested the Niti Aayog to intervene at policy level to adopt a sophisticated specific special international design for roads and drainage system specific to the northeastern region so that it could combat the heavy damage caused by monsoon rains every year. He cited the example of recently constructed Hoj-Potin Road under Trans-Arunachal Highway which has been badly damaged due to continuous downpour. He requested the Niti Aayog to design a system to deal with such catastrophe which is a regular phenomenon in this hilly state.
He also asserted that many important ongoing schemes under SPA has been forced to stop due to lack of fund as SPA has been de-linked by Government of India. Khandu requested that the pending funds against the SPA ongoing project be released so that the infrastructure development in the frontier state sees the light of the day. The Niti-Aayog Vice Chairman assured to do the needful but asked the state government to submit the Utilization Certificate timely. CM assured that he would ensure that the departments submit UCs timely.
The Chief Minister thanked Niti Aayog for taking up all pending inter ministerial issues of Arunachal Pradesh.
