Government ditches Education, agriculture
Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, May 10 2013 :
Even though the State Government has kept assuring to bring about a major change in education and agriculture sector, sectoral allocation of the plan amount has shown that all these assurances are nothing but empty words.
Out of the total Plan size of Rs 3650 crore provided by the Planning Commission for the current financial year, 2013-2014, Municipal Administration Housing and Urban Development (MAHUD), which, incidentally is under the charge of Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh, has been allocated Rs 32.32 crore, which is an increase of Rs 13.55 crores from the previous financial year.
In the last fiscal year 2012-13, the plan allocation of MAHUD was Rs 18.77 crore.
Shockingly, School Education and Agriculture, which come under Social Services get only Rs 6.18 crore and Rs 7.59 crore respectively.
Instead of any increase in plan allocation as per the assurances given for improving the education sector, School Education gets a reduced share as against Rs 7.38 crore in the last fiscal year.
The plan allocation of Higher Education remains unchanged at Rs 1.5 crore.
However, SCERT gets Rs 50,000 increase from its previous share of Rs 1 lakh.
The share of Adult Education also remains unchanged at Rs 60,220 while Technical Education, of which the government has been often talking about its development lately, gets only Rs 30 lakh.
On the other hand, the plan allocation of Agriculture and Allied Activities, which the government has kept top priority for improving the economic condition of the farmers and increase food production in the last fiscal year, has remained unchanged this time.
Agriculture gets Rs 7.59 crore without any change from last year, Horticulture gets Rs 4 crore only while Rashtriya Krishi Vigyan Yojana (RKVY), a Centrally sponsored scheme for farmers, gets Rs 10 crore as state share.
The plan allocation of Public Works Department (PWD) too remained unchanged at Rs 20.97 crore.
Meanwhile, Fire Service continues to receive shock with no budget allocation this year too.
There was no plan share for the department in the last fiscal year.
Power Department gets a reduced share of Rs 50,000 from Rs 12.50 crore of last fiscal year.
Interestingly, the plan allocation of Manipur Development Society (MDS), which has its own source of income, is enjoying an unchanged share of Rs 3.5 crore.