NE CMs’ meet: Issues relating to Tura airport, NEC raised by Sports Min
SHILLONG: Meghalaya Sports and Youth Affairs Minister, Zenith Sangma on Thursday demanded that an architecture school on the lines of School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi be opened in Shillong. Sangma was speaking at the meeting of Chief Ministers of North Eastern States in Guwahati called by the Ministry of DoNER.
Since the Chief Minister is camping in Delhi, Zenith attended the meeting on his behalf.
The School of Planning and Architecture had a modest beginning in 1941 as a Department of Architecture of Delhi Polytechnic. It was later affiliated to the University of Delhi and integrated with the School of Town and Country Planning which was established in 1955 by the Government of India to provide facilities for rural, urban and regional planning. On integration, the School was renamed as School of Planning and Architecture in 1959. The School is a specialized University, only one of its kinds, which exclusively provides training at various levels, in different aspects of human habitat and environment.
Sangma also stressed the need to operationalise airports such as Tura which require landing and takeoff by STOL aircraft and also underlined the need to incentivize operators to bring in such aircraft through a Viability Gap Funding Scheme.
While asserting that most ministries of the Union Government are required to spend 10 per cent of their budget in the North East, Sangma said the same is not always possible and the shortfall is placed under Ministry of Finance as NLCPR to be routed through the Ministry of DoNER for State specific development schemes.
“Unfortunately, there is limited transparency on how much money is actually available in this non lapsable pool and this lack of information holds back attempts by the North Eastern States to take up transformational projects,” the Meghalaya Sports and Youth Affairs Minister said.
He also urged the DoNER Minister to advocate for a greater role to be bestowed on the Ministry of DoNER in identifying projects with State Governments and facilitating availability of funds from NLCPR placed with Ministry of Finance to help the North Eastern States.
On the NLCPR Central, he said that there has been an attempt in the recent years to utilize some of these sources for a new funding window with the new nomenclature NLCPR Central and this was meant to encourage Central Ministries to take up new projects in the North Eastern Region.
“The experience in this regard was extremely disappointing. It is perhaps too much to expect that the Ministries which could not spend 10% in the North Eastern Region in the first place will now have the enthusiasm to take up projects out of NLCPR Central,” he said adding that the guidelines of the NLCPR Central should be revisited and States should be encouraged to take a leading role in project formulation customized for their needs in collaboration with Ministry of DoNER.
Sangma also said that the existing revised guidelines for administration of NLCPR, is too cumbersome and rigid, especially on the release of funds. He suggested that the release of funds by the Ministry of DoNER towards the NLCPR projects should be on the same basis of releases made towards Centrally Sponsored Scheme by the respective Central Line Ministries.
Stating that the NEC’s current budget of Rs. 770 crore is grossly inadequate to meet aspirations of the eight states or to even fund already approved projects, Sangma said that there is an urgent need to increase the annual budget of the Council.