Himachal CM lays foundation stone of several projects

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh today laid the foundation stone of the Rs 84.58-crore Lift Water supply scheme at Gharog in Shimla district, 30 km from here today.
The scheme would benefit more than 50,000 residents of 618 villages spread over 29 gram panchayats, including Shakrah, Mehli, Dev Nagar, Dhami, Nehra and Ghanahatti.
The Chief Minister also laid the foundation stone of an anganwari bhawan at Gharog, Government Senior Secondary School at Shakrah, Science Block of Senior Secondary School in Dhami, to be constructed at a cost of Rs 6.30 crore.
He inaugurated Halog-Bathmana Water Supply Scheme, set up at a cost of Rs 98 lakh to benefit over 2,700 residents.

Addressing a rally at Dhami in his assembly constituency, Singh said no additional taxes had been proposed in the budget presented by him.
He said the previous BJP government had announced opening of colleges at the fag end of its term without any budgetary provision, but his government had announced opening of 12 colleges, out of which nine have already been notified.

A provision of Rs 5 crore has been made for each college for creating necessary infrastructure.
Singh said an outlay of Rs 2,384 crore had been proposed for the Public Works department, which was nearly Rs 100 crore more than the current year's allocation of Rs 2,291 crore.

The budget for education has also been hiked to Rs 4,282 crore as compared to Rs 3,836 crore of current financial year.
He said Rs 922-crore Swan River Channelisation Project has been sanction for Una District.
The CM said in order to boost industrialisation his government had decided to set up HP Investment Promotion Cell and Industry Advisory Council. State-of-the-art industrial zones would be developed at Pandoga in Una district and Kandrori in Kangra with an investment of Rs 219 crore.
He said it had been purposed in the Budget that any new industry employing more than 300 Himachalis would be charged only 2 per cent electricity duty for five years.

Besides existing small industry would have to pay electricity duty at a reduced rate of 7 per cent and new unit to pay only 2 per cent for five years, he added.