NEC to hand over NE academic institutes to Govt

Agartala, Jun 3: To reduce financial burden of North Eastern Council, the Centre has decided to take over the management of all academic institutions in the North East.

Official sources here today said the 54th NEC meeting had resolved that the academic institutions, including Regional Pharmacy College in Agartala, Regional Institute of Medical Science in Imphal and Regional Institute of Paramedical and Nursing in Aizawl would be looked after by the concerned ministry.

The NEC had been managing the institutions since long but recently the performance of the institutions found to be not satisfactory as the council was facing paucity of funds, official sources said.

According to the sources, the NEC would not provide funds to any small project for any particular state of the region. It would finance only those projects concerning at least two states.

The recent appraisal report of the Development of Northeastern Region (DoNER) Ministry mentioned that it includes Rs 906 crore under roads and bridges, Rs 250 crore for power, Rs 199 crore for health, Rs 161 crore for water supply for all eight states of the region.

It has also stated that the NEC had approved the construction project of 31 roads (1357.17 km) during 2004-05 and 2005-06 with an estimated cost of Rs 1188.19 crore.

''To improve communication facilities, the NEC had supported construction of inter-state bus terminals and released Rs 23.47 crore during 2004-05 and 2005-06 for this purpose, while air connectivity within the region has been improved by inducting four 50-seater aircrafts during the 10th Plan at an estimated cost of Rs 175 crore,'' the report stated.

The NEC has contributed to upgradation, improvement and construction of power transmission and distribution lines and six system improvement schemes have been approved at an estimated cost of Rs 76.69 crore.

Special Accelerated Road Development Programme in North East (SARDP-NE), covering improvements and upgradation of about 7,616 km at an estimated cost of over Rs 15,000 crore has been conceptualized, the report added.

UNI