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 24×7 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.