Lieutenant Governor, Girish Chandra Murmu on Friday approved the First Capital Expenditure Budget (Capex) of Union Territory, J&K for the year 2020-21 here with an unprecedented hike of 67 percent.

Advisors to the Lieutenant Governor- Kewal Kumar Sharma, Farooq Khan, Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar and Baseer Ahmad Khan; BVR Subrahmanyam, Chief Secretary; Arun Kumar Mehta, Financial Commissioner, Finance Department; Atal Dulloo, Financial Commissioner, Health and Medical Education Department; Bipul Pathak, Principal Secretary to Lieutenant Governor; Administrative Secretaries, Divisional Commissioners, Jammu, and Kashmir, besides all Deputy Commissioners and other senior officers participated in the high-level meeting, in person and through video conferencing.

HIGHLIGHTS

1) Rs 5,136.40 Cr District Capex Budget proposed for the current Financial year as compared to Rs 3,079.54 Cr previous year, with a substantial hike of 67 percent.

2) District Planning & Development boards to be constituted with a focus on active public participation in the overall planning and development process of districts.

3) DCs to create online dashboards to monitor real-time progress of developmental projects and track grievances of the general public also in that dashboard.

4) 30 percent increase in the project execution performance in the current fiscal compared to the last year owing to technological interventions to monitor projects using PULSE & Geo Tagging

The meeting discussed the finalization of District Capex Budget for the year 2020-21, to cater the developmental needs of J&K with focus on the empowerment of Panchayati Raj System and strengthening grass root level of democracy through participatory management and mobilization of resources efficiently by fully providing matching grants through CSS and their effective implementation and monitoring.

The Lt Governor called for the constitution of District Planning & Development Boards with a focus on active public participation and their representatives to give shape to the Bottom-up the planning process for inclusive development of districts. He directed for the formulation of initial preparation of documents as per the resource position including preparation of Panchayat level Plans and Block Level Plans and further consolidation of plans at the district level by DDCs.

Notwithstanding the disruption created by the COVID pandemic, the meeting discussed detailed proposal under the District Capex Plan 2020-21, the physical status of projects those targeted for completion in the year 2020-21, status and progress of works under Centrally Sponsored Schemes and approved a District Capex Budget 2020-21 amounting to Rs. 5136.40 crore compared to Rs 3079.54 crore in the previous year, with a 67% hike, comprising three components viz CSS, Rs. 4543.47 crore, Negotiated loans Rs. 403.50 crore and UT Component of Rs. 189.34 crore. He stressed on the concerned authorities to take all the possible measures by taking into account the standing operating procedure of COVID-19 of social distancing issued by the government from time to time to accelerate the various ongoing works on various projects under different district sectors schemes (CSS/UT component etc) for their time bound completion.