Saturday, 09 September 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN
The Parliamentary Affairs minister Prem Chand Agarwal and Agriculture minister Ganesh Joshi were cornered by the members in the house on the fourth day of monsoon session of the Assembly on Friday. In response to a question of Chakrata MLA Pritam Singh on Dehradun Smart City project Agarwal said that the project started in June 2017 and will end in June 2024. He said that the Rs 1,000 crore project is jointly funded by the Union and State government in a 50:50 ratio. The minister said that the Union government has released a sum of Rs 394.50 crore while the State government has so far given Rs 241 crore for the project. He said that 16 out of total 22 works under the project are complete.
Agarwal said that works on drainage, sewage, roads and green buildings under the project are still incomplete. The BJP MLA from Dharampur Vinod Chamoli said that changes have been made in the DPR of the project. Similarly, BJP MLA from Roorkee, Pradeep Batra sought the status of the drainage works under the Smart City project. On their intervention, the minister pointed towards the opposition benches and commented that ” it appears our friends are supporting you”.
The minister also got irked by the number of supplementary questions allowed on one question. He also entered into an argument with Congress MLA Pritam Singh who said that as per the regulation of the Assembly there is no capping on the supplementary questions. Congress MLA Manoj Tiwari raised the question of the compensation paid by the government to the farmers affected by rains and disaster on which Agarwal said that Rs 30.39 crore have been given as compensation to 45,650 affected families. The minister also listed the rehabilitation policy 2021 and said that 1,835 families have been marked for rehabilitation under it.
The Congress MLA Adesh Chauhan objected to the point in the policy according to which Rs 25,000 per hectare is paid for improving the fallow land given to the displaced farmers. He said that there is no provision of transfer of fallow land in lieu of agricultural land to the affected farmers. In his response the minister said that the State government is in process of creating a land bank for rehabilitation of the disaster affected families.
Pandemonium erupted during the question hour when the opposition members objected to the statement of Agriculture minister Ganesh Joshi that no loss to the crops had occurred in Haridwar district due to the non seasonal rains. The Haridwar rural MLA Anupama Rawat, LoP Yashpal Arya and other MLAs from Haridwar objected to the comment of the minister.
