SHILLONG, May 26: Union Minister Jitendra Singh today said the Centre had to move cautiously while dealing with projects related to nuclear and atomic energy looking carefully into their sensitivity aspect, security angle and also the budget implications.
“The Centre is always cautious while moving ahead with projects related to nuclear energy and atomic energy as they carry a lot of sensitivity element with them, security angle and also huge budget implication,” the minister of State for Atomic Energy said here.
He was here to highlight the achievements of the one-year- old NDA Government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
His statement also came as a reaction to the stiff opposition voiced from several quarters on the proposed mining of Uranium in Meghalaya, also a uranium reserve state.
“This issue (opposition) has come up, but the Department of Atomic Energy is still studying it because this requires a lot of planning and work before taking up such projects,” he said.
He said the DAE had in mind new areas which could be explored, as earlier the concentration was mostly on conventional areas such as south India.
“Among the new areas, we are exploring not only Meghalaya but even Uttarakhand and some other areas as well,” he said.
According to the MoS, the DAE is also trying to brush aside apprehensions expressed by some of the states that there will be hazards if projects of this kind come up.
“They (states) have some apprehension that if a project is launched, there will be cancer all around, which usually doesn’t happen. We have conducted studies even in the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre on the persons or scientists working over there. There was no adverse health effect found. We need to do public awareness for this,” he said.
“The kind of mechanism which is in place now there is no obvious health hazard reported so far. No scientist himself has suffered,” the Union Minister of State said.
While stating that the Northeast is a prime concern for the Centre, Singh, also in charge of DoNER Ministry, said that a number of new initiatives had been taken up in the last five-six months including a programme called the ‘DoNER at your doorstep’.
“From January-February onwards every month for a period of 5 or 6 days lasting up to one week, we have officials, the secretaries and if possible the minister of the Ministry of DoNER are camping in one of these days by rotation. They have already done this in Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Mizoram and now Meghalaya turn is also due,” he said.
“The message should go that for redressal of your grievance you need not travel each time to Delhi and instead Delhi can also come to your doorstep and therefore the name is DoNER at your Doorstep,” he said.
Singh also said, “In addition, every fortnight we will have in Northeast at least eight Union ministers camping and travelling to their states. (PTI)
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