CM seeks funds for eco services and floating population in state
DEHRADUN: Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Saturday raised issues concerning Uttarakhand, including floating population, and ecosystem services, at the eighth governing council meeting of Niti Aayog.
The meeting was held on the theme of ‘Viksit Bharat @2047: Role of Team India’ in Delhi, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“For various centrally sponsored schemes, the criteria of stable population is used. However, a large number of pilgrims and tourists visit important pilgrimage places, Char Dham yatra, Kanwar yatra, throughout the year in the form of floating population, which is five to six times the population of the state. Our state has to provide all basic facilities like parking, traffic, drinking water, sanitation, accommodation, transportation, and security to pilgrims and tourists from limited resources,” the CM said, requesting the allocation of financial resources and policy making for the state accordingly.
According to the 2011 Census of India, Uttarakhand’s population reached approximately 10.01 million.
Dhami said that the state was providing important ecosystem services to the entire nation by conserving forests, wetlands and glaciers in about 70% of the state’s area. The CM said according to a study by IIFM, Bhopal, the minimum monetary value of these services derived from the forests of Uttarakhand is ₹95,000 crore per year.
He requested to increase the criteria of these forest and ecological services in the allocation of resources among the states in future.
The CM said that until this system comes into existence, green bonus should be provided to the state of Uttarakhand.
Dhami informed that 11 externally aided projects worth about ₹19,000 crore were in the pipeline in the state.
“Recommendations from NITI Aayog, Department of Economic Affairs, concerned central ministries, and in-principle consent from funding agencies have been received on these project proposals.
The financial resources of the state are very limited due to which our dependence is on Externally Aided Projects and Centrally Sponsored Schemes. According to an order of the ministry of finance, a ceiling has been introduced for Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. Due to curtailment of these projects, the creation of infrastructure facilities and livelihood opportunities in the state will be hampered,” he said, asking the PM for a solution in this regard.
Dhami said that the production capacity of small and micro hydropower projects less than 25 MW in the state is about 3500 MW and out of this only 200 MW is being exploited.
He requested that the state government should be given the right to approve and implement projects of less than 25 MW capacity.
“With this decision, we will be able to help in achieving the goals of Net Zero while producing clean energy under the vision of Developed India @ 2047 by utilising the power capacity of about 3000 MW soon,” he said.
Dhami said that under the ambitious river Linking Scheme, the state government is considering linking some glacial rivers with rain-fed rivers. He requested the central government for special financial assistance and technical cooperation for implementation of the river-linking project.
He said that most of the centrally funded schemes are made on the basis of “one size fits all”.
“It is not according to the specific conditions and needs of the states, but there are also schemes like the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana which have enough flexibility in the guidelines. It gives autonomy to the state. The same process should be adopted for other centrally funded schemes as well so that hilly states like Uttarakhand can get maximum benefits from centrally funded schemes,” he added.
The CM said the incentives received under the Industrial Promotion Policy implemented in the state in 2017 ended in2022, while similar industrial policies for Jammu and Kashmir and north eastern states are still going on. He said, “Being a hill state, our problems are also similar to those states. Hence, I request to extend the Industrial Promotion Policy in our state too for next five years.”