PM promises to go green

For Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, green is the buzzword for election-bound Uttarakhand, where he is campaigning for his Congress party. “If we come to power, we will make all-out efforts for the preservation of the forests, mountains and rivers of this state,” he said on Friday, setting the tone for a green agenda ahead of the January 30 assembly polls in the hill state.

Singh, who kick-started the poll campaign from the industrial town of Rudrapur, said his party would strengthen a clean Ganga programme. “We all know how important is Ganga for Uttarakhand. To make the river clean and keep its flow perennial, we have already set up the National Ganga river Basin Authority,” he said.

The Ganga River Basin Authority, he said, has laid down a roadmap for cleaning the industrial effluents from the river so as to make it clean by 2020. The body would also look into related environmental issues, he added. Under its Mission Clean Ganga, the Centre has also approved a Rs 155-crore plan to clean 10 cities in the hill state. India, the prime minister noted, had been facing threats from poverty, illiteracy, ill-health, economic insecurity, environmental degredation and cross-border terror. He appealed to the people of Uttarakhand to vote for the Congress, saying it “is the only party that has the experience and capability to deal with these challenges”.

Recalling the Congress party’s 2002-07 rule in Uttarakhand, he said that was the period when the state witnessed a fast pace of development. He listed a “robust growth” in industrial development, setting up of IT parks and launching of power projects as examples. “It is a matter of regret that as soon as the (subsequent and present) BJP government took over, all such developmental activities were stopped. They threw a spanner into our works,” he added. As for the Centre, the UPA government gave Rs 475 crore for the development works of four Uttarakhand cities under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Renewal Urban Mission. “We also sanctioned Rs 4300 crore for the Rishikesh-Karnprayag railway line,” he added.