Shimla: The Himachal cabinet on Friday made a change in states hydro policy by making a provision for a annual cash transfer to project affected families, as it approved construction of 3 multi storey parking areas, decided to relax qualifying marks for reserved categories in teachers eligibility tests and raised user charges for e-services at Lok Mitra Kendra’s.
Presided over by chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal , the cabinet decided to adopt revised guidelines under Local Area Development Fund (LADF) with relation to hydropower projects.
The existing guidelines under State Hydro Policy, 2006, needed change to address some gaps and difficulties being faced by the local areas, power producers and district administration, said a cabinet spokesman.
Under the new guidelines is a provision for 1 percent free power to be made available by the power producer, besides the 12 percent free power to the state government, would need to be allocated.
This one percent free power would be distributed annually as a cash transfer to every family in the project affected area of the project, said the cabinet spokesman. This will result in lifelong benefit to all the families in project affected areas, he added.
The cabinet made revised the service charges for electricity bill collection at Lok Mitra Kendras to Rs 5 per bill to be shared by consumer and board equally and Nakal Jamabandi charges of Rs 10 per page to be borne by applicant.
Cabinet granted an relaxation of 5 percent in the minimum qualifying marks to the SCs/STs, OBCs and Handicap categories of candidates in state teachers eligibility test.
It approved construction of multi-storey parkings at Chhota Shimla, Sanjauli and Lift in capital city Shimla which would create additional space for 1338 vehicles.
Cabinet also gave its nod for launching the ‘Mukhya Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojna’ (Model Village), aimed at integrated development two villages in each of the assembly that consisted of at least 40 percent Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes population.
As Editor, Ravinder Makhaik leads a team of media professionals at Hill Post.
Spanning a career of over two decades in mass communication, as a Documentary Filmmaker, TV journalist, Print Media journalist and with Online & Social Media, he brings with him a vast experience. He lives in Shimla.
