Itanagar:
Giving an impetus to development of border areas, the Arunachal Pradesh government has decided to develop three model villages along the Indo-Tibet border as a pilot project with an allocation of Rs 30 crore.
Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein while presenting the 2021-22 Budget in the state assembly on Wednesday informed that the three villages would be developed initially in Eastern, Central and Western part of the state along the international border.
“Development of border villages will remain an important priority of our government. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the last few years have witnessed an unprecedented focus on border area infrastructure development, especially road connectivity. We will continue to work for comprehensive development of border villages by providing them good road connectivity, power, water supply, health, and education,” Mein said.
He disclosed that the model villages would serve as pilot projects which would be further expanded to cover many more such villages.
The scheme would encompass innovative ways to dovetail social-economic-cultural needs of village life while establishing the model villages, he said.
“I assure that these model villages will be built in such a way that we will feel proud of them. We will rope in our border guarding forces in designing and implementing this scheme,” he added.
The government also proposed to allocate Rs five crore for repair of foot suspension bridges in border areas used by the border guarding forces for patrolling.
“We propose to launch border village illumination programme thereby establishing small and micro hydels in remote border areas which can be used in local grid or off grid mode. I propose to allocate initial money of Rs 40 crore to this project which we will implemented by converging resources from the Centre,” the deputy chief minister added.
