Chief Minister announces sops for Paonta Sahib

Tribune News Service

Solan, March 28

Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh announced a slew of sops for Paonta Sahib during his visit here today, which included the opening of a terminal marketing yard to facilitate farmers and a college at Aanj Bhoj in the remote Trans-Giri area, besides declaring Holla Mohalla as a district-level fair.

He also announced the renaming of Badripur Chowk to Guru Govind Singh Chowk and assured people to construct a pedestrian path to be named Yamuna Path along the bank of the Yamuna.

The CM also made an announcement that MA English and commerce classes would start at Degree College Paonta from the next academic session.

He laid the foundation stones and inaugurated development works worth Rs 44 crore.

Later, he addressed a public gathering at the municipal ground in the town, where he laid stress on strengthening the basic infrastructural facilities in educational institutes.

He said private educational institutions lacked adequate and quality teaching staff as compared to government schools.

To enhance the standard of government-run schools, the CM said the government was contemplating on introducing English, Hindi and mathematics from Class I and teachers who would fail to deliver would be taken to task.

Lending a piece of advice to teachers, he said despite being highly paid, they unduly involved themselves in transfers instead of concentrating on children.

Lambasting the industrial houses for failing to adequately employ state’s youth, he said, they were employing youth from outside the state on the plea of lack of skilled youth.

To bridge this gap, the government was mulling to open more ITIs and engineering colleges.

The CM said in their two-year tenure, three new medical colleges were being opened in the state out of which one was being opened in Sirmaur district. He said the state government was exploring the possibility of running the Rs 700-crore ESIC hospital at Ner Chowk in Mandi after the ESIC had refused to run it.

He also paid a visit to the local Bar Association office at Paonta and assured them of taking up the matter of opening an additional district and sessions court with the High Court.

Chief Parliamentary Secretary Vinay Kumar, MLA Kirnesh Jung, vice-chairman, Planning Board, Gangu Ram Musafir, chairman, Resource Mobilisation and Employment Generation, Harsh Vardhan, chairman, HIMFED, Ajay Bahadur, chairman, among others were present on the occasion.