By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 17 Aug: A cabinet meeting was held in the Secretariat under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami today. During the meeting, the cabinet approved several important proposals related to public interest. Along with this, the Dhami cabinet approved the proposals related to presentation of the supplementary budget during the upcoming monsoon session of the Legislative Assembly convened in Gairsain from 21 August. According to the information received, a supplementary budget of about Rs 5,000 crore will be presented during the session.
The Dhami cabinet before beginning its formal meeting paid a tribute to martyr Captain Deepak Singh who had laid his life in Jammu & Kashmir while fighting terrorists there recently by observing a two minute silence in his memory. In addition, the Cabinet also passed a proposal thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah for hiking the ex gratia amount of relief for losses due to natural disasters in the hill states. It may be recalled that Dhami Government has been pursuing the demand for higher ex gratia in case of disasters against losses of life and property with the Centre. The Centre has approved hike in the ex gratia under various heads.
Among other important decisions taken by the cabinet included approval granted for presentation of supplementary budget to the tune of approximately Rs 5,000 crores in the House during the upcoming Monsoon Session of the State Assembly due to begin on 21 April.
The cabinet approved a proposal expressing gratitude to the PM and the Union Home Minister for hike in the rates of ex gratia relief in case of disasters and also in rates of NDRF and SDRF payments. The cabinet also approved a proposal to change in name of ‘State Institute for Empowering and Transforming Uttarakhand (SETU)’, the institute related to policy planning in the state, to ‘State Institute for Empowering and Transforming Uttarakhand (SETU) Commission’ on the lines of the commission formed in the Government of India. The Institute has been converted to the status of Commission, thereby necessitating the change in the name.
The cabinet also approved promulgation of Uttarakhand Food Security Service Cadre (Group A, B and C) Service Amendment Rules- 2024. The cabinet also granted approval for promulgating Uttarakhand State Protocol (Non-Gazetted) Service Rules – 2024.
The Dhami Government also granted approval to table the annual financial representation of the financial year 2022-23 of Uttarakhand Power Corporation Limited under the Department of Energy and Alternative Energy in the Legislative Assembly during the upcoming session.
Approval was also granted for provision of giving appointment to the dependents of the deceased in the cooperative and public sector sugar mills of the state.
In an important development, a proposal to grant permanent employment or regularisation to contractual or ad-hoc employees working with the state government was deferred till the next cabinet as the cabinet did not unanimously agree on a final cut off date in this respect. Instructions have been given to bring the proposal of this regularisation in the next cabinet meeting. Sources claimed that the proposal to regularise the services of the ad-hoc and contractual employees having completed ten years of service was discussed at length in the cabinet but no agreement could be reached whether to keep the year 2018 or the year 2024 as the cut off period for the scheme and hence the proposal was not approved. However, the sources claimed that the proposal will soon be brought up in the state cabinet.
