Agartala: As announced in the current budget, the council of ministers in a meeting sanctioned rupees five crore under Roadside Beautification and Plantation of Trees (RBPT) scheme for raising sustainable greenery on both sides of 13,120-kilometre road including 853-kilometre national highways (NH) in Tripura.
The plantation programme will be carried out across 125-kilometre road stretches in both side of the road between Badharghat of Agartala and Sabroom, the south most end of Tripura in the initial phase and the process of the plantation would be completed by next month before the withdrawal of monsoon.
The education minister and the spokesperson of the cabinet Ratan Lal Nath said forest department was made nodal department for execution of the project and other line departments had also been associated for programme implementation. A state-level committee under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary is constituted for the purpose.
He said, according to the budget announcement, the state government had committed to providing monthly assistance of Rs 200 to each of the families for nourishing the plants on the roadside in front of their houses and within four months of passing the budget, the government decided the importance of the issue.
“Plantation is a seasonal exercise done in monsoon only. We had a plan to start the programme last month but formulating policy and managing fund for the project delayed the launching of the project. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb has made plantation a mass social movement for the past three months. Tripura has set a record by planting more than 6,000 saplings in a minute and now cross-section of the society is engaged largely in green caring activities,” Nath attributed. (UNI)
