New hostel to come up in JNU for NE students; convention centre at Dwarka

A new hostel will soon come up at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for the students belonging to the Northeast besides a regional convention centre in Delhi, Union minister Jitendra Singh said on Thursday.

Singh said new bamboo clusters and technology centres will also come up in Jammu and Kashmir with the help of the Ministry of Development of the North Eastern Region (DoNER) for providing technical support to the local farmers as the newly created Union Territory has great potential for bamboo entrepreneurship.

These issues were discussed at a review meeting of the Ministry of DoNER which was chaired by Singh.

Construction of a new hostel for the students of the Northeast in JNU is going on in full swing. The project undertaken by the North Eastern Council will be of great help to the students of the region, Singh said.

Similarly, work for the first ever North East Convention Centre, to be located at Delhi's Dwarka, is going to start shortly, he said.

The minister was told in the meeting that nearly 93 per cent of the DoNER ministry budget for the current fiscal has been spent so far, according to an official statement.

Singh asked the officials to achieve 100 per cent target till the end of this fiscal.

Earlier, about 75 to 80 per cent of the budget used to get spent for the ministry in the whole year, the statement said.

It was brought to the notice of the minister that against a total package amount of Rs 586.20 crore under the Social and Infrastructure Development Fund (SIDF), projects worth of Rs 587.17 crore have been sanctioned by the Ministry of DoNER, it said.

Out of this, an amount of Rs 504.10 crore has already been released and balance amount will be released on receipt of physical and financial reports from the concerned state governments, the statement said.