Exploit power potential of J&K UT: Prof Gupta

Excelsior Correspondent

JAMMU, Apr 5: Former Union Minister, Prof Chaman Lal Gupta has termed the first budget of UT of J&K as approved by the Parliament for the ensuing fiscal year as “good one” and people friendly as the problems facing the various sections of the society have been addressed to.
In a statement issued here, today Prof. Gupta said that in the budget special care has been taken to address the major problems facing the region over the decades.
He said it is good that in the big budget of over one lac crores of rupees over eighty percent has been earmarked for developmental activities and more so the problems facing the people for decades have been taken into account including that of the generation of energy particularly the schemes have been taken into hand costing Rs seven hundred crores to generate seventeen hundred mega watt of hydel power within next four years.
The statement said that it was an irony that the State of J&K was having the hydel power potential of over twenty thousand mega watts of energy but despite having spending hundreds of crores of rupees it could not generate energy to make the local requirements with the results the State had to purchase energy from outside costing about Rupees fifty thousand crores and the projects taken into hand for execution were kept in limbo.
This approach of the State ruling leaders needed to be looked into seriously and inquiry should be initiated that who was responsible for this mess whereas on the contrary the adjoining State of Himachal Pradesh was having almost equal hydel power potential to that of Jammu and Kashmir exploited more than 10000 mega watt of energy during this period and was not only sufficient to make its own requirements but also earned crores of rupees by selling the energy to other parts of the country.
The failure of the respective State Governments resulting in not only the losses of getting benefits of its hydel power potential but also the delaying in execution of its schemes have resulted in the cost of execution and also that of the benefits which it was to have by the execution of schemes.
Prof Gupta also said that in the budget due attention has been given to create jobs for the unemployed youth of J&K.
Prof. Gupta hailed the provision of Rs eight thousand five hundred crore for providing drinking water to the left out villages to provide JAL and NAL to each household.

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