Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Aug 20: Atal Bihari Vajpayee conceptualised a separate Union Ministry for Northeast and was the first Prime Minister after independence, who realized the seriousness and the gravity of the neglect felt by the people of the North Eastern region, and therefore, decided to respond with appropriate sensitivity .
This was stated here by Union Minister for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) Dr Jitendra Singh while speaking at a condolence meeting held at the DoNER Ministry’s central headquarters , before starting the day’s office work today.
Dr Jitendra Singh recalled that in 2001, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee went out of the way to pursuade his cabinet colleagues to set up a separate department in the Government of India, exclusively devoted to the development of the North Eastern region. The department was placed under the charge of senior cabinet Minister Arun Shourie who was later followed by another senior Minister CP Thakur. In 2004, the process of having a separate exclusive Union Ministry for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) was almost complete on the directions of Prime Minister Vajpayee when his Government’s tenure suddenly came to an end and thus a formal notification of a separate Ministry came a few days later.
It was again Prime Minister Vajpayee, Dr Jitendra Singh recalled, who defied all the contrary inputs and took the courageous decision to allow mobile phone network in all the States of the Northeast as well as in Jammu and Kashmir, where it had been held back even though it had become functional in the rest of the country. Not only this, he said, in the early years of his Government in 1998, Prime Minister Vajpayee came forward with the idea of having an exclusive “Non-Lapsable Central Pool Reserve” (NLCPR) to provide a concentrated financial support to Northeast.
Dr Jitendra Singh lamented that unfortunately, during the 10 years of the UPA regime after the Vajpayee tenure, the Ministry of DoNER appeared to have lost its priority but, fortunately, within months of taking over, Prime Minister Narendra Modi carried forward the development agenda of Northeast at a multiple pace, thus seeking to make up for the lapses of the intervening years. He said, Northeast today, is a witness to a revolutionary transformation, for which the single most important credit goes to Narendra Modi who has visited the region, not less than 30 times in just first 4 years of his term as Prime Minister.
When the Modi Government took over, Dr Jitendra Singh said, there were at least two States namely, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya, which had never seen a train, whereas today, there is a network of double gauge rail line being laid across the region. Not only this, he said, the first-ever train to Bangladesh is going to take-off from Agartala and the construction of the rail track is partly funded by the Ministry of DoNER.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, Prime Minister Modi has not only lived up to his commitment in bringing Northeast at par with the rest of the country, but has most diligently and brilliantly made Northeast a part of India’s growth story.
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