The Hindu 17.09.2013
‘Rs. 10,000 cr. sought for infrastructure development’
‘The fund will be used for infrastructure development projects’
The State government has sought Rs. 10,000 crore from the Union government for taking up various urban infrastructure development projects, including Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNRUM), Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT), Rajiv Gandhi Awaaz Yojna (RAY) and others, this year.
Minister for Urban Development Vinay Kumar Sorake told presspersons here on Friday that the Union government had indicated that there would not be any fixed allocation for States for taking up urban development projects this year and funds would be allocated on first-come, first-served basis and considering the relevance of proposals.
Mr. Sorake, on his maiden visit to Gulbarga after becoming a Minister, said that the State had sought Rs. 5,900 crore under JNNRUM, Rs. 3,000 crore under UIDSSMT and Rs. 242.66 crore under RAY and other programmes.
To a question he said, with the Union government removing the population criteria for cities to be included under JNNRUM, there was a huge scope for including many important cities in Karnataka under the scheme and seek additional grants from the Centre. “Gulbarga will be one of the cities to be included in the list for taking up projects under JNNRUM,” he said.
He said that under RAY, the State government had plans to construct 6,114 houses in three cities, including Bangalore, Gulbarga and Mysore. These houses would be multi-storied buildings for slum dwellers and families not owning any house. Under the UIDSSMT, the State had sought Rs. 203 crore for drinking water projects in Gulbarga, Rs. 28.7 crore for underground drainage system in Sedam, Rs. 57.5 crore for underground drainage system in Aland, and Rs. 65.4 crore in the industrial township of Wadi in Chitapur taluk of the district, he said.
Apart from this, the government had decided to release Rs. 100 crore each to tier II cities for infrastructure development. The previous BJP government had also released Rs. 100 crore each to tier II cities for the same purpose twice, Mr. Sorake said. The State had sought another Rs. 478 crore from World Bank for providing 24x7 drinking water to all the 55 wards in Gulbarga, he said. Minister for Municipal Administration and Wakf Qamarul Islam and MLC Allamprabhu Patil were present.
