New Delhi: Union minister Jitendra Singh on Monday said that Jammu and Kashmir and the unexplored north-eastern region have huge amounts of natural resources capable of driving India’s growth story in the ‘Amrit Kaal’.
Addressing the inaugural session of 7th batch of the capacity building programme for senior officers of the Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Service (JKAS) via video conferencing, Singh asked them to be catalysts of Modi’s governance reforms and help in their effective implementation in the union territory.
The training event is being hosted at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie from November 27 to December 08, an official statement said.
“The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the unexplored north-eastern region (NER) have huge natural resources that would drive India’s future growth story during the Amrit Kaal towards attaining a ‘Viksit Bharat @ 2047’,” an official statement quoted Singh as saying.
The value addition to India’s growth is going to come from these unexplored regions during the next 25 years, the Minister of State for Personnel added.
Singh, who represents Udhampur constituency of Jammu and Kashmir in the Lok Sabha, said the discovery of lithium in Reasi district may well turn out to be “India’s next big story”, giving a multifold boost to the country’s economy, according to the statement.
“Analysis suggests that the value of lithium deposits of Reasi might be higher than [the one found] in China,” he said, stating that lithium is a key component in rechargeable batteries and there is huge demand for it as the world turns to renewable energy.
Singh said, the success of ‘aroma mission’ and ‘purple revolution’ in the Bhaderwah and Gulmarg regions of Jammu and Kashmir has resulted in over 3,000 startups engaged in lavender cultivation alone.
“Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh have sent delegations to J&K to study the lavender cultivation model and have evinced interest in emulating the aroma mission,” the statement issued by the Personnel Ministry quoted the minister as saying.
Stating that an increasing number of items from J&K have been geo-tagged, Singh called upon the JKAS officers to promote the sale of GI-tagged products from the UT to boost the local economy.
He said that ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014, he has made it a commitment to bring the neglected and remote regions of India including J&K, Ladakh, the islands and the northeast region into the national mainstream.
PM Modi has introduced several governance reforms for the socio-economic upliftment of society, he added.
“Public policy in our country is currently aimed at enhanced transparency and accountability in governance with focus on fiscal federalism, transforming rural India, and improving the quality of public service delivery,” the minister said.
The 7th capacity building programme is being attended by 26 JKAS officers working in the ranks of secretaries, special secretaries, additional secretaries, CEOs, directors, joint directors, development officers among others, the statement said.
The training workshop is tailored to equip civil servants of Jammu and Kashmir in delivering robust and seamless services to the people, it said.
“The cutting-edge knowledge and new skill set acquired during this programme will help these civil servants in efficient public service delivery to improve the lives of people. The aim of this programme is to reorient officers to work with single-mindedness to improve the quality of life and create opportunities for the people,” the statement said.
