Power, sugarcane arrears, Bundelkhand top issues for Adityanath: Assocham

State should recourse to UDAY scheme of the Centre, said the industry body

Listing immediate challenges for the incoming BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, industry body Assocham on Sunday said the new administration needs to ensure better electricity, give urgent relief to Bundelkhand and find a lasting solution to the issue of sugarcane arrears to farmers.

Faced with high expectations created by a massive mandate given to the BJP, the incoming Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh has to meet these immediate challenges, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) said in a release here.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has designated Yogi Adityanath, who is also the head of a major Hindu temple in the state, as the new Chief Minister.

"The top priority of the new government should be to drastically improve the quality and quantity of power supply in the ensuing summer," the release said.

"It should immediately take recourse to the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY) scheme of the Centre and bring the state utility to robust health so that the users in both rural and urban areas are given better power supply," the industry body said.

"Being an agricultural state, Uttar Pradesh has a huge potential in diverse agro activities that need modern processing facilities which should be encouraged in the private sector by way of fiscal and other support," Assocham Secretary General D S Rawat said.

"Likewise, lot more agro hubs and mandis (big markets) should be built in the state," Rawat added.

"While initiatives like metro rail have been taken, they must be enlarged and lot more investment be made in city infrastructure including sanitation, drinking water, urban waste management," the statement said.

"A drive down the state presents a bad picture of heaps of plastics not only in cities but also in villages, creating environment hazards," it added.

"Since the same BJP is now in power in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, a better coordination should be achieved between the two states to give a better deal to the Bundelkhand areas which has suffered for long due to water scarcity and general backwardness," it also said.

In fact, the backwardness of Bundelkhand, which was a state till 1956, has periodically fuelled a movement for establishing a separate state for promoting development of the region.