Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, on Sunday, unveiled a grand statue of former Prime Minister late Chandrashekhar at Company Bagh in Ballia and also inaugurated/laid foundation stones of development projects worth Rs 80 crore for the district.
Addressing a public meeting on the occasion, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that very little of Ballia’s potential had been exploited so far, and urged Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) to come forward to take the agricultural products of the district to the international market.
Yogi said: “This can help achieve Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal of doubling farmers’ income and also contribute towards making Uttar Pradesh a $1-trillion economy. Cargos and the inland waterways service introduced between Haldia and Varanasi, which goes via Ballia, can play a vital role in facilitating fresh vegetables’ export from the district.”
The chief minister said that the government was committed to supporting farmers from ‘Beej to Bazaar’, adding that attention should be paid to attractive packaging.
He also said that some FPOs had been given registration certificates to carry the work forward, but more needed to be done.
Yogi also directed people’s representatives to come up with a proposal for a medical college in Ballia so that necessary action could be taken by the government in this regard as part of its larger goal to build a medical college in each district of the state. He said that 35 new medical colleges had been built in the state since 2017.
The chief minister also emphasised the need for increasing the number of doctors at the hospital at former prime minister Chandrashekhar’s native village Ibrahim Patti and linking more and more people with Central government’s Ayushman Bharat scheme and state government’s Jan Aarogya Yojana.
Yogi said that work needed to be done on multiple fronts, including education, health, agriculture and tourism, in the district to increase people’s income manifold and provide employment to thousands of youth in Ballia district.
The chief minister pointed out that one crore devotees visited Kashi Vishwanath during Sawan, which benefited the hotel industry, taxi drivers and others.
He stressed the importance of empowering women and making them self-reliant by linking them with self-help groups (SHGs) to carry out works under various schemes such as Rural Livelihood Mission, Child Development and Nutrition etc. as well as engaging them in dairy production.
He said that the training of women should be organised in various skills like tailoring, weaving etc. and they should be provided with toolkits.
Paying tributes to former prime minister Chandrashekhar, Yogi said that he was a ‘jan nayak’, a leader in independent India, who rose above party lines to do value-based politics and was popular not only within India but also abroad, including Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The chief minister said that the departed leader rose against the worst move to crush democracy and also supported the Swadeshi movement of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, adding that he contributed to strengthening parliamentary democracy. Yogi said that the late Chandrashekhar gave a new identity to Ballia.