Facing attack on various issues from different quarter, state government had now planned to hire the services of some professional Public Relation Company to improve its image and propagate its welfare schemes.
``The cabinet has approved hiring of the PR agency and approval has also been given to invite expression of interest (EOI) for the same”, Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan told reporters here on Friday afternoon. He said that after the EOI will be received, selection of agencies would be made by inviting tenders. However, he clarified that the job of the PR agency is just to assist the Information department through it’s professional expertise.
Besides the above, the cabinet also cleared new Electronic Manufacturing Policy, hiked the land compensation rate to the farmers whose land were acquired in Noida, Greater Noida and for Yamuna Expressway and had also decided to set-up solar grids in villages to extend supply power. Revealing the minutes of the important decision taken at the state cabinet meeting headed by chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, here on Friday morning, Alok Ranjan, said that the government has approved local mini solar grid policy in which solar power stations between 10 to 500 kilowatt would be set up in the private sector.
These grids would supply direct power to the near-by villages. Giving further details, Principal Secretary conventional energy, Jivesh Nandan, said that the government has fixed the rate of tariff with Rs 50 per month for 30 watt and Rs 150 per month for 100 watts usage.’’ Rate of tariff of the bigger consumers would be decided by the company itself,’’ he said. Nandan said that the private company would have to set up the solar projects and the transmission lines along with maintaining them for at least ten years.
In another major decision, government approved a hike compensation of 64.7 per cent of the land acquired in Noida, Greater Noida and for the Yamuna Expressway. ‘’ Now the farmers, who are agitating since long will get an additional 64.7 per cent of the compensation amount as directed by the Allahabad High Court,’’ Chief Secretary said while adding that it will end the long pending demand of the farmers who were agitating for the past 8 years. The announcement would also dispose of around 700 litigation pending in the High Court over the compensation issue. Earlier, a high-level committee of the state government headed by state minister Rajendra Choudhury had also recommended the same amount of additional compensation as directed by the HC. UP government has also accepted the recommendation of the committee. Ranjan said that the government also simplified the sanction of funds for the development projects in the state so that funds are allotted in a speedy way. The Cabinet approved that now projects up to Rs 25 crore could be approved by the department concerned, up to Rs 100 crore by the state finance minister, up to Rs 200 crore by Chief Minister and and Rs 200 crore and above by the state cabinet. The state government has also approved the new Electronic Manufacturing Policy in the state with an aim to set up three electronic clusters.
The investors setting up units in these clusters would get a capital subsidy of 15 per cent with interest subsidy of 5 per cent for seven years besides waiver of stamp duty and VAT for ten years. ‘’ While the first electronic cluster would be set up at Greater Noida while the remaining two would be set up in Eastern UP and Central UP respectively,’’ Ranjan said.
Government has decided to spend its own funds for the construction of the first phase of lucknow Metro. The first phase of 8 kilometers of rail tracks and stations between Transport Nagar to Charbagh station would be constructed in a speedy manner hence the state government has decided to provide all funds through its own sources. The Akhilesh Yadav government has also hiked the compensation given to the defence, para-military forces and UP police in case of death while fighting at the border, with naxalite or criminals. The compensation for the state police was Rs 10 lakhs and for the Army and Central forces it was Rs 15 lakhs. But now in all the cases, the compensation amount would be Rs 20 lakhs for each deaths.
The state government has approved in principal for an modern Industrial township in Naini Allahabad for which UPSIDC will provide funds in installments to the implementing agencies. The government also made it mandatory for the state government departments to procure 20 per cent of the items to be used in the development and welfare schemes from the small and micro enterprises. Cabinet also cleared creation of ten more posts of Additional SP rank officer to facilitate better promotion opportunity for the officers of Provincial Police Services (PPS) cadre.