Dr Jitendra Singh on Wednesday credited the Modi government for achieving several developmental feats in the region.
The BJP is trying hard to supplant its Hindutva agenda that helped it get a majority in the 2014 elections with the development plank in the Northeast, where elections are due in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura in a few months. It is pushing for air dispensaries and ambulances.
To further its efforts in shunning the Hindutva baggage that can play a spoilsport in the beef eating Northeast, Minister for Development of North Eastern Region, North East India (DoNER), Dr Jitendra Singh on Wednesday credited the Modi government for achieving several developmental feats in the region.
Dr Singh said his ministry has forwarded the proposal of connecting remote parts of the Northeast with Air Dispensaries to the Aviation Ministry that will help people get free medical help for which they cannot afford to travel to Guwahati and Kolkata because of time and money constraints.
"The proposal is at an advanced stage and soon you will see the initiation of air dispensaries in Manipur and Meghalaya. It is again one of the many new initiatives of the Modi government that nobody paid attention to in the last 70 years like connecting new places with railways, providing airports to Itanagar and Shillong and connecting Agartala with Kolkata via Bangladesh," said Dr Singh.
The minister said all roads that remain neglected and are called orphan roads because of jurisdictional issues between states are being adopted by the Modi government to improve connectivity.
The DoNER ministry has also started a venture fund to help the youth create jobs under the Start Up India scheme. The ministry has adopted an innovative approach in funding, depending on the feasibility of the proposals and can even offer up to 90 per cent of the total requirement of money, he said adding that most of the 66 proposals have been bagged by the youth of Assam but the ministry is finding ways to promote youth in other states too.
Dr Singh was non committal on BJP's plan to align with Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) but said we are trying to take care of their grievances and they too are in a comfortable zone with us.
The BJP is working hard to have some kind of poll arrangement with the IPFT that is a force to reckon in Tribal Areas Autonomous District Councils and wants a separate tribal State of Twipra.
An anti-Bengali formation, the IPTF was in news for leading the blockade in which TV journalist Santanu Bhowmik was murdered in Mandai in Tripura's Khowai district in September last year.
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