New Delhi: Taking ahead Centre's mission for an overall development of Northeast, the Ministry of Development of Northeastern Region (DoNER) has provided electricity to 2,614,659 rural households in the landlocked region in last three years. In addition to this, many of the rural habitations in the region have also been connected by roads.
As per the statistics presented in the Parliament by the DoNER ministry, rural areas in Assam top the list of such electrification where 1,945,149 household have been provided electricity from October 2017 to March 2021.
As many as 1,39,090 rural households in Tripura got electricity during the same time followed by 199,839 in Meghalaya, 132,507 rural households in Nagaland, 108,115 in Manipur, 47,089 in Arunachal Pradesh, 27,970 in Mizoram and 14,900 rural household sin Sikkim.
Ensuring rural connectivity which is also a major priority area of the Narendra Modi government, a majority of habitations which were unconnected got the road connectivity.
As many as 115 rural habitations in Northeastern States got road connectivity of 1373 km.
"Several initiatives have been taken by the government in northeastern region (NER) to enhance connectivity in rural and urban areas during the last three years. These relates to improving connectivity through air, rail, road, waterways and telecom connectivity in the Northwestern region," said DoNER Minister G Kishan Reddy.
Air connectivity: Ongoing development of new Greenfield airports at Holongi, Tezu in Arunachal Pradesh, Dibrugarh airport in Assam, Imphal airport in Manipur, Barapani airport in Meghalaya.
Rail connectivity: During the last three years, 136 km new line (Bogibeel bridge with linking lines between Dibrugarh and North Bank line, and Agartala -Sabroom new line) and 113 km doubling (Lumbding-Hojai patch) have been commissioned.
Road connectivity: Major ongoing capital road connectivity projects in Northeastern region include 4 lanning of Dimapur-Kohima road (62.9 km) in Nagaland, 4 lanning of Nagaon bypass to Holongi (167 km) in Arunachal Pradesh.
Similarly, waterway connectivity: Development of national waterway-2 (Brahmaputra river 891 km) Sadia to Bangladesh border and National Waterway-16 (Barak river, 121 km) Bhanga-Lakhipur stretch including India-Bangladesh protocol (IBP) route are ongoing projects in North East.
Talking to ETV Bharat, BJP MP from Assam Queen Oja said that ever since the Narendra Modi government came to the power, entire northeastern States have been witnessing an overall development in all spheres.
"During the UPA regime, connecting all capitals in Northeast was a distant dream. But now with proactive approach of the government, all the state capitals have been properly connected. We hope in the coming year, the entire northeastern region will see more development," said Oja.
It may be mentioned here that under the Act East policy of the central government, developing all the northeastern States was a major priority of the government.
