Dev of E. UP discussed at CS-led meet

LUCKNOW: Chief secretary RK Tiwari on Thursday said under the urban transport plan Gorakhpur will have 25 electric buses operational by June next year. Tiwari said this at a meeting of various departments on integrated development of eastern UP districts.

He said the state has a target of installing 8,000 green borewells (solar-powered), of which 35 per cent, that is approximately 2,500, will be installed in eastern UP districts.

Various departments such as agriculture, irrigation, fisheries, industries, tourism, IT, medical and health, vocational-basichigher education and transport participated in the meeting and made presentations on what all they had planned for eastern UP districts. The meeting decided to have mapping done for site selection for borewells in Shravasti, Sidharthnagar, Kushinagar and few other districts.

The irrigation department discussed a micro-irrigation proposal for the region saying, due to scarcity of water there, microdrip irrigation would be most effective. And sprinkler irrigation would be expanded in the region keeping in mind Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s idea of ‘per drop, more crop’.

The meeting also emphasised on improvement in traditional ways of farming of the Tharu tribe. The Tharu tribe people are concentrated in Balarampur, Maharajganj, Shravasti, Bahraich and Sonbhadra.

The meeting decided to start organic farming as a pilot project on 100-200 acre land in 15 eastern UP districts and also encourage contract farming of potato, jackfruit, wood apple, guava, banana, chilly and condiments in the region by facilitating contracts of farmers with multi-national companies.

Regarding industries, the meeting proposed to encourage people to engage in IT, electric vehicle industry, food processing, logistics, machine parts manufacturing, agriculture machinery etc.

For enhancement of tourism in the Buddhist circuit, the meeting announced that a ‘Buddha App’ would be developed in languages other than English and on the app all Buddist circuit spots would be identified with all the relevant details.

Tiwari said with abundance of IT talent in eastern UP, a start-up incubator has been initiated in Prayagraj while they will also come up in Varanasi and Gorakhpur. The Gorakhpur’s start-up incubator will be ready by the end of 2020, he said.