The State Government on Tuesday approved 13 proposals worth over Rs1,000 crore for development of roads, bridges and flyovers across the State. In a Cabinet meeting, the Government also decided to expedite its development programmes related to making the State IT education hub. The Cabinet approved 26 proposals in total related to Mid Day Meal (MDM) and disaster management among others.
The largest of road transport proposals accepted in terms of value is of Rs163.2 crore, under which development works will be done on Mahuda-Sindri road in Dhanbad district. Other than this, Budhmu-Umedanda-Hendgir road under Ranchi district has been allotted a sum of Rs62.20 crores for its development. Road project from Garhwa, Simdega, loherdaga, Chatra, latehar, Ramgarh, Giridih and Khunti have also been cleared.
Following the Jharkhand High Court orders the Cabinet also decided to remove the age bar for those physically challenged aspirants appearing in 6th Public Service Commission examinations, who appeared in 4th and 5th Public Service Commission examinations also and couldn’t make it. But this relief will be given only once.
Quality of Mid Day Meal (MDM) has remained a concern across the country since the day it was started, with Jharkhand being no exception. Thousands of children have fallen ill and hundreds of them have lost their lives in the State in last couple of years. Trying to give it a full stop, Government has decided to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with centre for a centralised kitchen for Mid Day Meal. Government has also decided to restructure Jharkhand State Mid Day Meal Authority with creating 36 new posts for it, including Director, Deputy Director, Data Entry Operator and Clerk among others. In this, Director will be a Joint Secretary rank officer and Deputy Director (Administration) will be of Deputy Secretary/Deputy Director rank from State Government.
In order to curb black money transactions, government has decided to promote E-GRACE, an electronic mode of payment in all government related transactions and revenue receipts. A proposal of signing an MoU with the largest public sector bank, State Bank of India (SBI) to carry it forward has been accepted, and process will be initiated soon. SBI E-pay has been chosen as payment gateway for all the transactions.
In order to make Jharkhand an IT Education hub, government has decided to run some of already constructed and some under construction ITI Institutes itself. There are 54 such institutes in Jharkhand, in which 17 will be run under Public Private Partnership (PPP) and seven under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities of different companies. Government has decided to run rest 30 by itself.