Mohanpur (West Tripura): At a time when the mercury of politics is shooting up with Trinamool Congress expanding its footprints in the state, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman came here on a two day state visit. It has been a long time since a minister of such a stature visited the state on an official tour after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. However, many people see this as BJP's counter strategy to Trinamool Congress bringing new leaders every day from Bengal.
Sitharaman, during the first day of her tour, announced an over thousand crore-rupee bonanza for the state. The biggest of the projects that amount to the tune of Rs 1,300 crore has been allotted for the tribal areas.
Addressing a public gathering at Mohanpur, a little over 25 km away from Agartala, the Union Finance Minister said: "Within a week to 10 days, the ambitious project aimed to create sustainable livelihood and infrastructure development worth Rs 1,300 crore will be cleared from the central government. The project will be implemented exclusively in the tribal dominated areas of the state."
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According to her, half of the state's population belonged to Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste communities and the government needs to make concerted efforts to create enough livelihood opportunities for these people.
"The World Bank and the central government will fund this ambitious project together," she added. The Finance Minister said that she had been told that the people living in the remote hamlets of the state do not have connectivity to the national highways. Moreover, due to lack of connectivity, schools and other basic amenities can't reach the people.
"Roads are important. In emergency situations people face a lot of hurdles due to lack of connectivity. In addition, people here don't have the security of a basic income slab. Sustainable livelihood generation is also a priority of the government. This is why we are going to implement this Rs 1,300-crore project", Sitharaman said.
Apart from this, the Union Minister also announced two more projects worth Rs 21 crore.
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"These projects are cleared today. The first project is widening four national highways for which the government has sanctioned Rs 14 crore and the other one is related to digitisation of Agartala Smart City," she stated.
Sitharaman said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to honour the efforts of women in the family.
"He always wants to give priority to the women whenever he comes up with a new scheme. The Ujjwala Yojana and Jal Jeevan Mission are some examples of his views," she said.
Earlier, Sitharaman inaugurated 11 new projects worth Rs 151 crore digitally from the dais. These include a 132 KV power station, 80,000 functional household water taps, and seven projects under RIDF, SPA and a surface water treatment plant funded by Asian Development Bank.
