Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Nov 9: Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh convened here today a meeting of J&K cadre IAS and other All India Service officers, currently on Central deputation in Government of India.
Prominent among those who attended the one-and-a-half hour luncheon meeting included Secretary HRD Kewal Kumar Sharma, Additional Secretary Home B.R. Sharma, Additional Secretary & EO in DoPT P.K. Tripathi, Additional Secretary Coal Suresh Kumar, J&K Resident Commissioner in Delhi Rakesh Gupta, Joint Secretary Rural Development Atal Dulloo, Joint Secretary Textiles Shant Manu, Joint Secretary Commerce & Industry Sudhanshu Pandey, Joint Secretary Environment Jigmet Takpa, Joint Secretary AYUSH Roshan Jaggi, Joint Development Commissioner in MSME Samuel S.R, CEO Youth Affairs & Sports Naveen Aggarwal, Director Defence Preet Pal Singh, Deputy Secretary Finance Mandeep Kaur and others.
Additional Secretary Environment Arun Kumar Mehta, Joint Secretary I&B Ashok Kumar Parmar, Joint Secretary Commerce Manoj Kumar Dwivedi and HRD Commissioner Biswajeet Kumar Sinha were among those who could not attend the meeting because of being out of the national capital on different official engagements.
Addressing the officers, Dr Jitendra Singh said, the basic purpose of a meeting like this was that the officers of different All India Services belonging to J&K cadre could get to know each other more intimately and initiate a process of regular periodic interaction among themselves. This, he said, would also enable them to mutually discuss with each other the various J&K pertaining schemes and programmes in their respective union Ministries and Departments, which could accordingly be further followed up and expedited.
In a free-frank interaction, different officers narrated the recent initiatives taken by the Centre for J&K State and also pointed out various constraints faced in implementation. The officers were of unanimous view that the J&K Government, like most other States, should rely more and more on IT tools and e-Governance to ensure fast delivery of decisions as well as fast and time-bound movement of files. They suggested, if all the files were put on-line with a common server, the extra burden of transporting files from Srinagar to Jammu and vice-versa during the “Durbar” move, could also be got rid of.
Some of the positive initiatives like increasing the number of candidates for PM Scholarship Scheme and making it a wide-based also came up during the discussion. The issue of land identification and acquisition for setting up of Sports Stadiums and expediting the work on roads and bridges were also discussed.
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