Praising the performance of the Yogi Adityanath government in addressing development issues of the state, NITI (National institute of transforming India) Ayog has suggested to the Uttar Pradesh government that it needs to do more for the agriculture, nutrition and dairy sectors which contributed 30 per cent income for the state.
NITI Ayog, led by vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar on Tuesday, held the third meeting to review the progress of the ‘action plan’ formulated by it for the development of the state. The focus of the NITI Ayog is on nutrition, health, education, rural development, sanitation and drinking water, irrigation and water resources, and industry and agriculture sector. The meeting was presided over by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Rajiv Kumar, addressing a joint press conference along with Health Minister Siddarth Nath Singh, said that the Yogi Adityanath government had achieved commendable progress in all spheres of development as stated in the action plan. He, however, said a lot more needed to be done for the nutrition programme and providing piped drinking water to the rural population to curb the incidence of disease.
Siddarth Nath Singh said in 2017 NITI Ayog had laid bare the state of development of Uttar Pradesh in the first meeting held in 2017. He said later five working groups were constituted which had drawn the road map for different departments to achieve the developmental goals.
Rajiv Kumar said the NITI Ayog drew the attention of Yogi Adityanath to the large number of vacancies at the supervisory level at the ‘Integrated Child Development Scheme’ (ICDS) running Anganwadi centres. He said as many as 50 per cent of posts were vacant in ICDS. He said ICDS was running 1.88 lakh Anganwadi centres in 37 districts. “Out of these, 54,000 will be provided a smartphone for the better monitoring of the nutrition programme,” he added. He disclosed the Chief Minister had issued directions to officials for placing indent with the State Public Service Commission for filling up the vacancies.
The Ayog said a large number of Anganwadi centres was being run in state-run primary schools and if schools were provided electricity connection, all centres would benefit. Rajiv Kumar said NITI Ayog had set up a joint working group with the UP government for tackling the drinking water problem in Bundelkhand. He said a pilot project was launched in Mahoba and Hamirpur and after the results of the project it would be extended to other parts of the state.
Rajiv Kumar said UP achieved a significant progress in implementing the PM Awas Yojna, execution of three big irrigation projects, attracting investment of over Rs 4 lakh crore and creating of jobs under ‘One district one product’ (ODOP) scheme.
Member, Agriculture, of NITI Ayog Ramesh Chandra said the Ayog had given 17 suggestions to the UP government for augmenting the income of farmers. He said UP had done well on three-four issues while on the rest of issues a lot more needed to be done.
