Jammu, Dec 4:
Principal Secretary Finance, Navin K Choudhary today held extensive deliberations on pre-budget proposals of School Education, Youth Services & Sports, Technical Education, General Administration, Information Technology, Planning, Development& Monitoring, Hospitality & Protocol, Estates and Ladakh Affairs Departments for the next financial year. Principal Secretary Planning, Development and Monitoring, Rohit Kansal, Commissioner / Secretary GAD, Hilal Ahmed Parrey, Secretary School Education, Ajeet Kumar Sahu, Secretary IT, Saugat Biswas, Secretary, Youth Services & Sports, Sarmad Hafeez, Secretary Ladakh Affairs, Reva Kumari along with the teams of officers of the respective departments attended the meetings.
Officers from Finance Department including, Director Budget, Imtiyaz Ahmed Wani, Directors Expenditures, Shabir Ahmed Khan, Parvez Ahmed Kakroo, Joint Director Budget, Raman Kumar Gupta and others attended the meetings. Marathon discussions were held on the functioning of the said departments and their budget proposals for the fiscal 2019-20. The concerned Administrative Secretaries put forth the budget proposals and their viewpoint on the future action plans to run the affairs of their respective departments. They also briefed the Principal Secretary Finance on the status of various ongoing projects, achievements, targets and future initiatives for strengthening the infrastructure and other facilities. Principal Secretary called upon the heads of departments for taking necessary austerity steps to curtail the unfruitful expenditure under various heads and merging various components under one head. He urged upon the officers to formulate perspective and cost effective DPRs for the development of the State. He urged for doing away with the practice of creating liabilities on various counts and asked for seeking prior concurrence of the Finance Department where there is urgent need for undertaking such projects/schemes.
While discussing the proposals of the School Education, Youth Services & Sports and Technical Education, the Principal Secretary urged for developing necessary infrastructure and other basic facilities for the students in all schools across the State to ensure better educational environment. He also called for evolving innovative mechanism to improve education standards and raising the literacy rate in the State. He directed for proper upkeep and protection of assets, premises and toilet units in the educational institutions from the available resources. To give impetus to the sports activities in the educational institutions, Navin called upon the Secretary Youth Services & Sports to submit a comprehensive proposal at the earliest for creating massive sports infrastructure so that maximum students are involved in different sports activities. He directed for identification of land available with various educational institutions, including schools, colleges and universities in consultation with the heads of institutions for which the government will ensure necessary funding to develop sports infrastructure. He also called for time bound completion of all on-going sports and other projects so that they are put to use at the earliest. He further urged the Director General Youth Services and Sports and Directors School Education to organize frequent study tours of students to various prominent institutions across the country to provide them ample opportunities to interact with their counterparts in other States and study the environment to gather knowledge on career and educational requirements. The budget proposals of the Departments of GAD, Planning and Development, Hospitality & Protocol, Estates, Information Technology and Ladakh Affairs were also discussed in depth and Principal Secretary Finance agreed to consider some new initiatives related to the infrastructural development and to enhance their efficacy.
