Sibal announces aid package for Nagaland

New Delhi, Oct 13 (UNI) Nagaland is to get 50 micro hydel projects of 100 KW capacity each in the next two years under a central aid package, which also include automatic weather stations and mobile diagnosis facility.

The assistance was announced by Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, who laid the foundation stone of the Nagaland Bamboo Resource Centre at Dimapur today.

The hydel projects, based in remote villages, will be based on technology developed by the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Science and Technology Ministry officials said here. Twenty-five of them will be sanctioned next year and the rest in 2008. Department of Earth Sciences and India Meteorological Department (IMD) will set up eight automatic weather stations in the state by the year-end, Mr Sibal said. IMD will also instal a Doppler radar for weather forecast within a year, he added.

Another highlight of the package is a mobile diagnosis facility in the state. Nagaland will become only the second state to get the facility, developed by the Department of Science and Technology, after Uttaranchal.

Strengthening science education in the state is another step by the department, which will help upgrade laboratories in four colleges as well as train sciences teachers.

''The north-east may be physically far-off from New Delhi but is in the hearts of the people of the country,'' a Science and Technology Ministry release quoted Mr Sibal as saying.

Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio said the Science and Technology Ministry could take the lead in giving ''shape and direction'' to the Centre's 'Look East' policy.

Mr Sibal is on a three-day visit to Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

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