Himachal Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh on Friday said that though the 14th Finance Commission had withheld the grants to zila parishad and panchayat samitis, the State Government would fund them out of its own resources and a budget of Rs 42 crore had been proposed for this fiscal.
The Chief Minister while addressing a meeting of Congress party at Swarghat in district Bilaspur, said, “I would certainly take up the matter with the Union Government to amend the recommendations of 14th Finance Commission to pave way for devolution of funds to Panchayat Samitis and Zila Parishads.”
He said that the people of Himachal Pradesh always believed in policies of the Congress and whatever development had been done so far it was due to successive Congress regimes.
The Congress leaders fought for separate State of Himachal Pradesh and got the statehood status, said he.
Virbhadra said that if one peeps back into the history of the state, he would see that there was nothing in the name of development at that time. Now, the state had achieved a lot and progressed to make the state the Model Hill State in terms of development, he said.
Even the inaccessible areas were connected with the roads and provided electricity, schools were opened in the remotest areas of the state and as of today, there were 119 degree colleges catering to the higher educational needs of the students. 42 degree colleges were opened during the last four years of the present government regime. When Himachal was formed there were hardly 280 kilometres of roads which were more than 37000 kilometres at present, said the Chief Minister.
Virbhadra Singh said that the New Mukhya Mantri Sadak Yojna had been started to connect left out habitations with roads. A sum of Rs 16.68 crore had been sanctioned for construction of Baghchal bridge on which the work had now been started thus fulfilling the demand of the people and connecting Kotdhar area in Jhanduta constituency of Bilaspur district, said he.
He added that administrative units were created to redress grievances of the people at their doorsteps.