NEW DELHI: The lone Rajya Sabha MP from Meghalaya, Wansuk Syiem on Friday heavily criticized the BJP-led NDA government for not providing enough funds to the remote and backward Northeastern states in this year’s budget while praising the previous, Congress-led UPA, government’s efforts to uplift the region.
Participating in a debate on the budget, Wansuk said that this year’s Union Budget had no major initiative for the landlocked Northeast region, especially for its socio-economic development.
Syiem cited that under the UPA regime North East Special Accelerated Road Development Programme was developed with dedicated funds for national and state highways, while this year’s budget makes no mention of this programme.
“For the last three years Rs 8750 crores were released under this fund for the region while in this year’s budget there is no mention of SARDP-NE at all,” Wansuk said.
Additionally, the UPA government had proposed to connect all the state capitals of the Northeast with four lane highways under East-West corridor project but the ruling government’s budget is totally silent on the mega plan, she added.
The road network carries much significance for the landlocked North East since the entire region is connected with the mainland by a widely known chicken neck – a 14 km wide and 100 mile long corridor flanked by Nepal in the north and Bangladesh in the south. But despite this fact the Union Budget describes no major initiative of the government for the Northeast neither in infrastructure development nor in the overall economic development of the region, she said.
The MP added that the UPA Government had always stressed upon the upliftment of North East and in 2008 it had released the North Eastern Region Vision 2020 document, with the objective to set new goals, identify challenges and suggested regional and sectorial implementation strategies for promoting socio-economic prosperity of the region. This was done in order to keep the growth rate of the North-East Region at par with the overall national growth.
The UPA government was striving to attract optimum investments from the South Asian countries well as the neighbouring countries to the Northeastern region through initiatives under the Look East Policy. The Policy was perceived in a multi-faceted manner in diverse areas such as improved connectivity, promotion of trade and investment and cultural exchanges with South East Asian countries.
The MP also demanded that the Centre must promote cross border trade within local communities across Indo-Bangladesh border.
“We must recall that our new Prime Minister Narendra Modi had shown his concern and commitment towards Northeast during pre-election campaign…He also wanted to make the whole region as organic which she said will contribute to the upliftment of economic development of the whole region”, Wansuk said.