Himachal Dy CM calls on HM Amit Shah, seeks funds for cooperative sector

New Delhi, Jan 22 Himachal Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri on Wednesday met Union Home Minister Amit Shah here and urged him to allocate adequate funds to the state for schemes in the cooperative sector, especially for computerisation of primary agricultural credit societies and the Institute of Cooperative Management (ICM).

Agnihotri said the state has already provided land at Panjawar in Una and has provided a grant of Rs 5 crore for setting up the ICM.

He sought Rs 10 crore as a grant-in-aid to set up the state-of-the-art cooperative training institute.

The Home Minister assured that he was aware of the cooperative sector proposals and funds would be released soon to ensure the timely completion of the project.

He also assured that the Centre would accord all possible help to Himachal Pradesh as far as funding in cooperative schemes is concerned.

It was also discussed to provide funds for the opening of Mahila Cooperative Haats on a pilot basis in the state.

Agnihotri said Himachal has made great strides in the computerisation project. As many as 870 primary agricultural credit societies were identified in the first phase out of which 647 have been made online. An amount of approx. Rs 18.57 crore has been spent on this while in the second phase, 919 societies have been identified and digitisation work is in progress.

The Union Minister stated that soon the Ministry of Cooperation would convene a meeting of central and state officers to thwart all the threadbound issues.

Agnihotri apprised the Union Home Minister about the menace of the drug ‘chitta’ in the state and the action taken in this regard by the state government.

He said that the state has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards corruption and drug menace. He said that FIRs have been registered against the drug kingpins and a massive hunt was on to nab a few leftouts.

--IANS

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Source: IANS