Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Thursday interacted with women journalists associated with the Indian Women's Press Corp at Haryana Bhawan in Delhi on Thursday and talked on various issues ranging from development of the state, education, politics, security, tourism to Covid control.
Khattar said that the government has taken several steps to enhance women's education and security in Haryana and in the last seven years, out of the foundation stones which were laid for new colleges in the state, about 70 percent of the colleges are for women. A college at every 20 km distance in the state will be ensured so that women do not have to go far to seek higher education, he said, adding that transport has been arranged for women. He said that in Haryana Police also separate recruitment has been started for women and now the number of women personnel in police has reached 10 percent. Also, he said that to strengthen the security of women, Durga App was started and Durga Vahini was formed.
Responding to a question about the sex ratio, the Chief Minister said that in January 2015, the sex ratio of Haryana was 871 girls per 1000 boys. After this, with the cooperation of the people of the state, the sex ratio at birth reached 923. In the last two years, due to the outbreak of Covid, we could not focus on improving the sex ratio, although the guidelines are followed and about 300 FIRs have also been registered in the state against those conducting tests to determine the sex of the fetus. Now again we will focus on this subject and our target is to take the sex ratio of the state to 950 in the next two years.
Answering a query regarding promotion of tourism in the state, Khattar said that there is a lot of scope for religious and cultural tourism in Haryana including Morni in Panchkula district, Dhosi Pahar in Mahendragarh district, Surajkund in Faridabad. Giving examples, he said that Rakhi Garhi of Hisar is important from the point of view of archeology. National and international tourists also visit Kurukshetra. In addition, to highlight the Saraswati river, we will sign an MoU with Himachal Pradesh to build a dam in January 2022. For this purpose, tourist places will be built uptil Pehwa in the first phase so that the sense of reverence that people have about the Saraswati river remains intact. We are working on many such projects, he said.
When the Chief Minister was asked what he considers the strongest issue of his government in the elections, he said that our government is working with complete transparency and the message that should go to the people of the state is that the government is working for them. He said that earlier governments were self centric, party centric or family centric and there was no sentiment towards the society. After taking over the reins of the state in the year 2014, we gave the slogan of Haryana Ek Haryanvi Ek and got development done in the entire state with equal spirit. He said that we have brought transparency in the system with the help of technology. Corruption is everywhere and at every level, it takes will power to fix it, and I have that will power.
Additional Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister and Director General of Information, Public Relations and Languages, Dr. Amit Agrawal, amongst others were present.
