IIT for Mandi, Central University for Kangra: Virbhadra

By: Ravinder Makhaik

Shimla

“The state proposes to set up the Indian Institute of Technology in Mandi district and the Central University in Kangra district,” chief minister Virbhadra Singh told My Himachal News Bureau.

Thanking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, he said setting up quality institutions would enable it to become an important educational hub, which the state was striving for.

Regarding the long pending demand for a railway line to Bilaspur, the chief minister said it would help to ease road traffic on the Chandigarh-Manali highway. “The track is estimated to cost at over Rs 1200 crores,” said Virbhadra. With many upcoming as well as established cement plants located in the Beas-Sutlej valley, a rail line to Bilaspur would help in transporting clinker and finished cement out of the region.

On Gandhi Jayanti, finance minister P Chidambaram addressing a well attended rally on the Ridge ground had announced that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who was to address the rally could not make it as he was recovering from a minor surgery.

“It was the Prime Minister who has asked me to let you know that the centre would set up a fully funded central university, open a new IIT institute in the hill state as well as take the Bhanupali-Bilaspur rail track, as a time bound project,” said Chidambaram.

Chidambaram who was here in connection with launching of the ‘Aam Adami Bima Yojana’, a countrywide social security scheme, said that “Himachal by all accounts was the best administered state in the country. It has been chosen to the launch the country model of insurance scheme for disability-cum-death, whereby the dependents or the disabled person would not be rendered financially distressed as it is the first to adopt it, he said.

Chidambaram said that India was now a one trillion dollar economy and the world had begun to take notice. He said the government’s resources had grown with the growth of the nations economy and now resources were available for increasing the allocations for health, education and social security sectors.

Taking a dig at both the left parties and the BJP, he said that there were groups who were not in favour of growth and for some India was shinning. “India must shine for all, not just a select few,” said Chidambaram. He said that for the government to reach out to the people, growth in manufacturing and services needs to take place first before social justice could be taken up.