By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 27 May: Chief Secretary Anand Bardhan chaired a Secretaries’ Committee meeting at the Secretariat here on Tuesday, with District Magistrates from all districts participating via video conferencing. During the meeting, he sought detailed updates on the Covid-19 situation from Health Secretary Dr R Rajesh Kumar.
Significantly, Bardhan outlined key points from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at the Governing Council meeting, stressing the need to work towards a ‘Developed Uttarakhand by 2047’ by focusing on developed villages, cities, and districts by 2047. He also directed all the districts to formulate individual plans and set targets for the next decade. He urged states to identify and develop at least one location to global standards and emphasised on boosting exports of state-produced goods, instructing the Industries Department to draft a comprehensive plan for promoting indigenous products.
The CS noted that the 21st century is technology-driven, underscoring the necessity of leveraging new technology in planning and execution to ensure timely delivery of government schemes. He stressed the importance of the electric vehicle sector and encouraged the adoption of EV initiatives within the state. He also called for integrating new technology training into education and skill development programmes.
Additionally, Bardhan also advocated for promoting Vedic mathematics in Uttarakhand, instructing the Higher Education, Basic, and Secondary Education departments to collaborate on this initiative. He directed the digitisation of manuscripts and asked the Culture Department to ensure their preservation both digitally and physically. In the meeting, plans to establish a State Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) were also discussed, with cooperation from the Home and Information Technology departments to strengthen cybersecurity infrastructure in the state.
He instructed all the District Magistrates to identify long-term and legacy issues, assuring them that the government would work on resolving such matters at a higher level. He also called for a grand celebration of Environment Day on 5 June, assigning Principal Secretary Forest RK Sudhanshu to lead a large-scale event inspired by the Prime Minister’s call for ‘Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam’ (One Tree in Mother’s Name).
Present at the meeting were Principal Secretaries RK Sudhanshu, L Fanai and R Meenakshi Sundaram, Secretaries Shailesh Bagoli, Nitesh Kumar Jha, Radhika Jha, Dilip Jawalkar, Ravinath Raman, Dr Ranjit Kumar Sinha, Chandresh Kumar Yadav, Deepak Rawat, Dr V Shanmugam, Dr R Rajesh Kumar, Dr Neeraj Khairwal, Vinay Shankar Pandey, Dipendra Kumar Chaudhary, Vinod Kumar Suman, Ranvir Singh Chauhan and Yugal Kishore Pant, besides other senior officials.
