VARANASI: On the third day of her stay in Varanasi, governor Anandiben Patel gifted two e-rickshaws to the Central Jail for ferrying the elderly and and physically weak prisoners for their health checkups. She also asked the agriculture institutes to ensure that agricultural technologies being developed in labs are reaching to the fields.
Soon as she reached the Central Jail on Wednesday morning, Patel offered floral tributes to the memorial of freedom fighter Chandrashekhar Azad and learned about other freedom fighters who were lodged in this jail during the freedom struggle.
While taking stock of the jail campus, the governor noticed many elderly and frail prisoners. She enquired about how they were taken outside the jail for health checkups. When the jail authorities informed her that they are they are made to walk for the purpose, Patel announced to gift two e-rickshaws for internal transporation of such prisoners. She said the cost of operation of these vehicles would be borne by the Governor House.
She also viewed the functioning of cowsheds, vegetable farms and their produces, furniture manufacturing and weaving workshops run by prisoners trained inside the jail.
Later, the governor reached Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth’s faculty of agriculture science and technology at the university’s Bhairo Talab campus to inaugurate it. She was welcomed by MGKV vice chancellor Prof TN Singh.
While addressing the students on this occasion, she called upon the students to lead the process of mobilising farmers for the formation of farm produce organisations (FPOs). She said that the district already has 10 registered FPOs but there is a need to increase the number of such organisations to improve the income of farmers.
“This faculty currently has 176 students. They all should focus on taking the agriculture technologies and advances in research to the fields. The students who have come from agrarian backgrounds should encourage their family members to adopt those technologies and advancements in farming, thereby setting an example before the farmers of their villages,” said Patel during her address.
“As this university is named after Mahatma Gandhi, it should work towards realising his dreams of rural development. This can be achieved by motivarting farmers to adopt new techniques and shift to organic farming in view of the rising demand of organic produce and the hazards of chemical farming,” said the governor, further asking the students to make farmers aware about easy techniques of composting, better water-saving methods of irrigation.
Highlighting the initiatives and schemes of the government in the farm sector, she also mentioned that a large number of women has also been coming forward in the field of dairy farming. She appealed to the youths to keep the waterbodies like Bhairo Talab clean.