Stiff deadlines for UP under Niti Aayog's action plan
, ET Bureau|
Updated: Oct 03, 2017, 12.23 AM IST
NEW DELHI: Uttar Pradesh faces an uphill task as it seeks to adhere to the deadlines imposed by Niti Aayog for education, health and rural development among eight parameters identified by the Centre’s think tank for lifting the most populous state in the country out of the quagmire of underdevelopment.
The deadlines ranging from three months to five years, fixed after a Niti Aayog team visited UP in May, include running government hospitals on public-private partnership mode by the end of this year, eliminating leprosy by 2018 and measles by 2020, running a special campaign to enrol out of school children at primary and upper primary levels, covering 10 lakh hectares across the state under micro-irrigation by March 2018 and constructing nearly 12 lakh houses in villages under the PM Awas Yojana by March 2019.
Niti Aayog’s 25-page ‘Action Plan for Uttar Pradesh’, seen by ET, has fixed December 2017 as the deadline for the state to obtain all clearances for the Ken-Betwa interlinking of rivers project and commence project execution during the current financial year.
The project, once complete in six to seven years, is expected to provide irrigation coverage to 6.36 lakh hectares of Bundelkhand in UP and Madhya Pradesh, and provide drinking water to 13 lakh people. During a presentation to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in May, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant had said that UP was struggling on various parameters such as education, health, connectivity and poverty.
“If India has to move forward, UP has to perform,” Kant said in his presentation, stressing that Niti Aayog’s objective was to make UP emerge as No. 1 state in the country.
The CM subsequently formed eight groups of secretaries to follow up on the Aayog’s targets. Among key health targets fixed for UP with a one-year deadline are reducing high maternal mortality rate in the state by early and digital registration of pregnancy in one year’s time, training 10,000 skilled birth attendants and digital payments of health subsidies and incentives through Aadhaar. All district hospitals in UP are to be upgraded to medical colleges in the next three years and incentives offered within six months to specialists in hard areas.
The plan requires UP to form an autonomous entity within six months for a bulk drug procurement and distribution system to improve people’s access to quality medicines.
A rationalisation exercise for teacher deployment is being carried out and a plan to integrate working of basic and secondary education by merging or integrating such schools is under consideration from the next acaemic session. UP also needs to utilise the unspent balance of `330 crore at the end of 2016-17 for drinking supply works and prioritise ‘Har Ghar Jal’ Yojana to achieve 100% water coverage.
The plan has prescribed a time frame for increasing coverage of state’s rural population with piped water (15.5%) at par with the national average of 54%.
The deadlines ranging from three months to five years, fixed after a Niti Aayog team visited UP in May, include running government hospitals on public-private partnership mode by the end of this year, eliminating leprosy by 2018 and measles by 2020, running a special campaign to enrol out of school children at primary and upper primary levels, covering 10 lakh hectares across the state under micro-irrigation by March 2018 and constructing nearly 12 lakh houses in villages under the PM Awas Yojana by March 2019.
Niti Aayog’s 25-page ‘Action Plan for Uttar Pradesh’, seen by ET, has fixed December 2017 as the deadline for the state to obtain all clearances for the Ken-Betwa interlinking of rivers project and commence project execution during the current financial year.
The project, once complete in six to seven years, is expected to provide irrigation coverage to 6.36 lakh hectares of Bundelkhand in UP and Madhya Pradesh, and provide drinking water to 13 lakh people. During a presentation to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in May, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant had said that UP was struggling on various parameters such as education, health, connectivity and poverty.
“If India has to move forward, UP has to perform,” Kant said in his presentation, stressing that Niti Aayog’s objective was to make UP emerge as No. 1 state in the country.
The CM subsequently formed eight groups of secretaries to follow up on the Aayog’s targets. Among key health targets fixed for UP with a one-year deadline are reducing high maternal mortality rate in the state by early and digital registration of pregnancy in one year’s time, training 10,000 skilled birth attendants and digital payments of health subsidies and incentives through Aadhaar. All district hospitals in UP are to be upgraded to medical colleges in the next three years and incentives offered within six months to specialists in hard areas.
The plan requires UP to form an autonomous entity within six months for a bulk drug procurement and distribution system to improve people’s access to quality medicines.
A rationalisation exercise for teacher deployment is being carried out and a plan to integrate working of basic and secondary education by merging or integrating such schools is under consideration from the next acaemic session. UP also needs to utilise the unspent balance of `330 crore at the end of 2016-17 for drinking supply works and prioritise ‘Har Ghar Jal’ Yojana to achieve 100% water coverage.
The plan has prescribed a time frame for increasing coverage of state’s rural population with piped water (15.5%) at par with the national average of 54%.
