Tripura to be made gateway to NE region: CM Saha at NITI Aayog meet

New Delhi/Agartala, July 27 (IANS) Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha said on Saturday that the state government earlier launched ‘LAKSHYA-2047’ and for this purpose, several transformative steps were taken to enhance connectivity by making the state the gateway to the northeastern region. 

Speaking at the 9th Governing Council meeting of the NITI Aayog in the national capital on Saturday, the Chief Minister said that through the Prime Minister’s ‘HIRA Plus Model’ for Tripura's development, various programmes are being introduced, including enhancement of capital expenditure to bring about Ease of Doing Business and Ease of Living, e-office introduction up to the gram panchayat level, and the opening of Beneficiary Management System (BMS) to facilitate Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) for state-run welfare schemes 

He also said the deliberations and decisions at the NITI Aayog meeting would go a long way to strengthen cooperative federalism in the country.

At the meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, CM Saha informed the Governing Council regarding the various measures taken up by the state government for the development of Tripura.

He also said that the Tripura government has established the Good Governance Department and SIT (State Institution for Transformation) as per the mandate of the NITI Aayog.

Speaking about the industry and investment sector, Saha said, “We are focusing on reducing the dependency of the workforce on agriculture by 50 per cent, increasing trade and commerce through Bangladesh and other states of India to up to Rs 1 lakh crore, and enhancing tourism's contribution to GSDP up to 15 per cent by 2047."

The Chief Minister also said that in the fields of infrastructure, communication, and logistics, the state government’s vision is to achieve 80 per cent agricultural land area under irrigation and provide four-lane road connectivity to all important destinations.

“In the fields of environment, forest, and climate change, we would like to increase the value of forest produce by five times, improve the composition of very dense forests to 40 per cent, resulting in an increase of GSDP by up to 25 per cent, 2.5 times increase in water bodies in forest areas and enhancing the Agar wood economy to Rs 10,000 crore,” Saha said.

He also informed that the state government has taken several steps for women's empowerment, such as 33 per cent reservation for women in state government Jobs, collateral-free loans for women-run startups, reduction in stamp duty for property registration, and no tuition fee for girl students in government degree colleges.

Over 4.71 lakh rural women have been mobilised into Self Help Groups (SHGs) and there are presently 83,424 ‘Lakhpati Didis’ in the rural areas of the state, he said.