The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh has urged upon the Delhi-based Resident Commissioners of States to play a proactive role in coordinating, liaisoning and expediting the various centrally supported development projects and centrally sponsored schemes in their respective States. Addressing a joint meeting of senior officers of DoNER Ministry and Resident Commissioners from eight North Eastern States here today, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, most of the Resident Commissioners are senior officers with a long administrative experience and therefore, they can play a valuable supplementary role in bridging several missing links between the States and the Centre.
Dr. Jitendra Singh said, there is a common complaint about delay in several of the projects under the Ministry for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) and one of the commonly cited reasons is delay in submission of Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) with consequent rise in the budget cost and similarly, delay in acquisition or transfer of land for new projects. In all such situations, the office of Resident Commissioner of the respective States can help in getting the file work expedited through intervention both at the State as well as the Central level, he added.Describing the DoNER Ministry as also a kind of nodal Ministry which has to deal with every other Ministry for a wide range of projects under it, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, sometimes because of the paucity of human resources, it may not be possible to pursue an individual project of a particular State lying pending in another Ministry and therefore in such cases, Resident Commissioners can depute somebody from their office to do the follow up of the documents in different Ministries and at the same time, also guide the DoNER Ministry as to where the intervention is required.
For this purpose, he requested Secretary, DoNER and officials of North Eastern Council (NEC) to develop a mechanism of holding regular monthly interaction with Resident Commissioners of the eight North Eastern States and at the same time, also requested the Resident Commissioners to feel free to communicate with the officials of the DoNER Ministry without any hesitation because this Ministry is meant to facilitate the disposal of Northeast related issues and therefore they should also own the Ministry in the right spirit, he added.During the meeting major projects from each of the eight North Eastern States were discussed one by one and status report on each was also sought. The Resident Commissioners, on their part, were extremely enthusiastic and cooperative and said that never before in the past they had been called to play such a participatory role by the Ministry.The meeting was attended by the Resident Commissioners and officers from all the eight North Eastern States of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura.