Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, May 26 : Ladakh Lieutenant Governor R K Mathur today called on Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh and discussed COVID situation and other issues including revival of development activity in the newly created Union Territory. He also thanked the Minister for his day-to-day support and for facilitating central assistance during the entire period of pandemic.
Dr Jitendra Singh formally conveyed to the Lieutenant Governor, the Government’s appreciation for the consistent diligence and effort with which the Union Territory administration had dealt with the COVID pandemic and also succeeded in containing it. He noted that it was Ladakh which had caused initial alarm for the entire country when suddenly a number of cases reported Corona positive from among the returnees, who were coming back from Iran pilgrimage, but it goes to the credit of the administration and the civil society that Ladakh is among the first to gradually come out from the Corona assault.
Dr Jitendra Singh thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his clear instructions to give priority to peripheral areas of Ladakh and North East, as a result of which Air Cargo supplies started reaching there even before the lockdown. As of today, the store of ration, vegetables and fruit in Ladakh is in much bigger quantity than it would have normally been otherwise in this part of the year, he added.
The Minister also had a word of praise for the two young Deputy Commissioners of Leh and Kargil and the two SSPs of these two districts respectively who were in touch on day-to-day basis and coordinated for different issues from time to time, which helped in facilitating supply of medical equipment and later the movement of people returning from different parts of the country.
Mathur apprised Dr Jitendra Singh of the current situation and said that now an effort is being made to revive the development activity. He also discussed some of the projects related to power generation and construction work which had got delayed due to the pandemic and said that very soon these would be revived.
Among the various projects in the pipeline, Dr Jitendra Singh also mentioned the project for processing of “Leh Berry” for which the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has prepared a plan.