*Over Rs 700 cr required to create infrastructure
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, July 6: After remaining completely out of the focus for one and half year, the report of Mushtaq Ahmed Ganai-headed Committee has finally received the attention of the Government due to the personal intervention of Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah and now the Revenue Department is going to place a detailed note before the Cabinet shortly.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that within days of the Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah issuing directions for placing a detailed note on the administrative units recommended by Mushtaq Ahmad Ganai Committee, the Revenue Department has carried out substantial exercise vis-à-vis the infrastructure and manpower required in order to implement the recommendations of the committee and the financial implications involved in the same.
“During the next week, the Revenue Department would submit proposal to the General Administration Department for placement before the Cabinet for thorough discussion and preparing road-map about going ahead with the creation of new administrative units”, sources said.
The process of ascertaining the demands of people for new administrative units was actually started in 2007 when the Government had constituted a Committee headed by former Chief Secretary of the State, Dr S S Bloeria. However, the report of the Committee was termed as ‘inconclusive’ in 2009 and in January 2010, the Committee was revived with Mushtaq Ahmad Ganai as its head and Varinder Kumar Gupta, Mumtaz Afzal, Abdul Aziz and S R Kapur as its members.
The Committee submitted its report to the Government on July 14, 2011 following which the Revenue Department was directed to prepare a note after detailed examination of the recommendations for discussion and final decision in the Cabinet.
When the note was placed before the Cabinet in January last year it was decided to seek more details from the Revenue Department for taking holistic view of the entire issue. Accordingly, the Revenue Department was asked to work out human resource, infrastructural requirement and financial implications involved in setting up of new administrative units as proposed by the committee.
However, since January 2012 the Revenue Department didn’t come up with the information and the issue received the due attention after one and half year—on July 2, 2013 when the Chief Minister, while chairing the Cabinet meeting, directed the Chief Secretary to ensure submission of detailed note on proposed administrative units as early as possible.
According to the details of the proposal being given final shape by the Revenue Department, Mushtaq Ahmed Ganai committee has recommended 63 Community Development Blocks of the Rural Development Department, 23 Sub-Divisions, 57 Tehsils, 79 Niabats and 733 Patwar Halqas.
As far as creation of infrastructure for these proposed administrative units is concerned, the Revenue Department has worked out financial implications of over Rs 700 crore. “The financial implications are more vis-à-vis creation of infrastructure for Community Development Blocks, Sub-Divisions and Tehsildars as compared to Niabats and Patwar Halqas as for the first three category of administrative units full-fledged office complex are required”, sources said.
About the recurring expenditure (salaries and other expenses to be borne every year), sources said, “the annual financial implications in this regard are yet to be finalized by the Revenue Department”, adding “the expenditure for the graded posts like Block Development Officers, Sub-Divisional Magistrates and Tehsildars would be more”.
In response to a question, sources said, “setting up of such a large number of new administrative units is not going to be an easy task as on one side there would be issue of financial constraints and on the other side creating infrastructure for such a large number of administrative units would take time and in the meantime Government will have to make some temporary arrangements”.
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