Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has written two more letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this time demanding release of Rs 1,500 crore for providing safe drinking water in rural areas, besides to ensure smooth coal supply so that power generation in the State would not be affected under new coal policy of the Centre. The Chief Minister pointed out to the Prime Minister that any cut in the budget meant for providing drinking water to the rural folks would not be in public interests.
Requesting Modi to release Rs 1,500 crore in this financial year for launching the proposed drinking water projects or completing the ongoing ones, Yadav said in his letter sent to the Prime Minister on Saturday that the priority of his Government was to complete such projects within the stipulated time and any delay in releasing the funds would cause unnecessary delays. Referring to the National Rural Drinking Water Programme, Yadav said that to implement the drinking water projects in rural areas, Uttar Pradesh had received Rs 1,03,836.53 lakh in the 2014-15 financial as Centre’s share. He said that as per the strategic plan 2011-2022, 90 per cent of the rural population was to be supplied safe drinking water through pipelines.
Yadav said that under the first phase of the above plan, Uttar Pradesh had to receive Rs 3700 crore to complete sanctioned or ongoing projects. Besides, he said that 8661 localities had to be linked with pipe-line water supply by May 2015 and 1000 more localities had to be included in the project for which they needed Rs 1000 crore more. Yadav further claimed that in the present financial year 2015-16, the total budget in comparison to last financial year or earlier on, is just 25 per cent which would badly affect the projects to provide safe drinking water to people in rural areas as Uttar Pradesh would received just 25 percent of the budgetary support than to what they get in last financial year. To ensure that there would be no adverse affect on the on-going projects, Yadav, requested Narendra Modi that the prime minister would look that budget should not be reduced and that Centre’s aid should be immediate released so that they would carry on with on-going projects.
In another letter to prime minister, also written on Saturday, Akhilesh Yadav, requested the Centre to continue coal supply for lalitpur Thermal Power Plant till regular linkage facility would be started. He also appealed to facilitate regular linkage facility for the said plant as soon as possible. It may be mentioned that lalitpur power plant had hundred percent power contract with UP Discom on bases of Regulated Tariff. Yadav claimed that shortage of coal supply to lalitpur power plant would affect it’s production, causing a big problem for the people of the State, who were already reeling under hot and humid weather.
Yadav further said that to in wake of growing power requirement in the State, his government had decided to develop new lalitpur Power Generation Company limited, which would produce 1980 megawatt power. He claimed that an agreement to supply coal to this plant has been made with the Centre and in 2007, and they also sent a proposal for long-Term Coal linkage in 2009. It is learnt that the Centre is planning to just provide coal to the above plant just till coming June. After said period, Centre is likely to go E-Auction to provide coal.