Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur met Union Minister of Environment Forest and Climate change Prakash Javadekar at New Delhi today.He congratulated him on his victory in Lok Sabha elections and assuming the charge of the Ministry.The Chief Minister discussed about various issues related to forest and environment. He urged him to provide the power of diversion of forest land up to five hectares to state government to speed up development activities. He said that being a hill state most, of the land comes under forest and delay in clearances act as hindrance in the pace of completion of projects. If this power is granted to state, it will help in executing developmental projects speedily.He also apprised the Union Minister that Himachal Pradesh comes under the jurisdiction of regional office at Dehradun which creates delay and requested to change the jurisdiction to Chandigarh office which is comparatively nearer and easy to approach.The Union Minister thanked the Chief Minister for his good wishes and assured to look into the matter.
Chief Secretary B K Agarwal was also present on this occasion.