In its meeting held on Tuesday, the State Cabinet took important decisions on 15 issues. Cabinet Minister and State Government spokesman Madan Kaushik informed that the cabinet had approved the decision to increase the State’s contribution in National Pension Scheme from 10 per cent to 14 per cent. This will be applicable for employees appointed after 2005 and entail an additional financial burden of about Rs 150 crore per year on the State Government. Further, it also did away with the 12.5 acre ceiling for industrial purposes in mountainous areas. This will enable purchase or leasing of more than the said area of land for health, education, agriculture, horticulture and tourism enterprises in mountainous regions and the same except agriculture in the plains. This decision was taken as proposals were coming in for setting up enterprises in the mountains but were getting stalled because they needed more land than allowed earlier.
Further, the cabinet also approved the merger of the Uttarakhand Special Area Development Authority (SADA) with the Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority (MDDA). The area under SADA will now be under MDDA’s purview. The cabinet also approved cancellation of the recruitment process of 600 contract pharmacists advertised in 2016 and instead will recruit about 2,000 contract staff including pharmacists, ANM and other health workers. Regarding the land transferred by forest department to irrigation department and then back to the forest department in Kalagarh, the cabinet approved a joint inspection by the revenue and forest departments of the remaining 28.6 hectare land not yet transferred to the forest department, on which 405 families are currently residing. In the case of Lalluji and Sons, who had been contracted for work in the 2016 Ardh Kumbh in Haridwar, the state will pay the pending Rs 1.76 crore with 15 per cent interest. In this case, the cabinet approved the decision taken in the arbitration by state administration since the time for filing an appeal had lapsed. Further, regarding a writ filed in the Supreme Court, the cabinet also approved three categories to define deemed forests. In the case of unlimited financial authority accorded earlier to municipal corporations, the cabinet approved replacing the committee headed by the departmental secretary for granting administrative approval with a five member committee headed by the municipal commissioner.