PM may announce package on I-Day

Amit Khajuria

Tribune News Service

Jammu, August 3

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to announce the much-awaited package of Rs 1.22 lakh crore for Jammu and Kashmir from Red Fort in Delhi on August 15. The package will be utilised for the development of all three regions of the state.

Sources have said the Prime Minister is set to announce Rs 1.22 lakh crore for Jammu and Kashmir during Independence Day celebrations in Delhi.

The money will be given to the state with directions to use it in providing quality governance in all three regions of the state and the entire affair should be transparent, fair and with accountability.

The Central government wanted the development and rehabilitation to be equitable and fair, leaving no room for grumbling from any quarter.

The financial package was earlier expected during the Prime Minister’s one-day visit to the state on July 17, but Modi did not announce the package. His visit was restricted to the birth centenary anniversary of late Congress leader Girdhari Lal Dogra.

On July 22, while on a two-day visit to Kashmir, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval gave clear shape to over Rs 1 lakh crore package for the development of the state and told Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed unambiguously that the Centre stood by him.

Doval assured  Mufti that the Centre’s faith  in his political acumen  and administrative experience to steer the state  out of the mire was as  much as  was the case when the Prime Minister had decided to  join hands with Mufti’s PDP to run the coalition government in  Jammu and Kashmir.

Governor NN Vohra had been pressing for economic help and jobs for the unemployed youth and new hope for people of the state who were devastated by the floods in September 2014 and wanted economic uplift. He had written a series of letters to the Centre as well, said the sources.

Doval, an expert on Kashmir and geo-strategic affairs and architect of many   policy decisions of Narendra Modi government, shared the situation of Kashmir with the Prime Minister.

The much-awaited economic package might be around Rs 1,22,000 crore — a revised version of the Prime Minister’s Reconstruction Plan, which was first announced by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh  in November 2004.