Shillong, Jan 12: The NPP on Thursday said it has delivered its promise on the issue of coal mining.
The matter was highlighted in its report card titled “promises delivered” released by NPP national president and chief minister Conrad Sangma at a party meeting held at Polo Ground on Thursday.
The party said it has been able to deliver its promise for a mining policy to uphold the interests of the people and the state by drafting the Meghalaya Mineral (Prevention of Illegal Mining, Transportation and Storage) Rules, 2022 for prohibition of illegal mining, tracking of the mining, transportation, storage of minerals and to keep a check on overall mining activities of the state.
It said that prospecting licenses have been allotted to 17 miners/individuals adding that according to the landmark judgment of the Supreme Court in the year 2019, the rights of tribal people over the land and minerals have been upheld.
The party also added that the integrated check gates have been set up for efficient revenue collection.
The party has claimed that when the NPP-led MDA government took over in 2018, the state was behind in many key sectors, health and education sectors were in fragile condition, unstable government, rampant corruption, and scams were a norm.
“The state was unable to deliver projects, the GSDP tanked to the bottom. However, at an unimaginable pace and scale we were able to deliver which seemed unachievable,” it said.
“Our relentless pursuit for excellence accompanied by the strong community support is now resulting with the state garnering accolades in the national and international landscape. The state has been awarded in almost every field. Be it the national awards for implementing the Jal Jeevan Mission for ensuring clean and safe drinking water for over 2.8 lakh households or the international United Nations award for the MeghEA project, Meghalaya is now scaling the developmental ladder and creating a better life for the citizens,” the party said.
The NPP claimed, “When the economy of the whole world slowed down during the pandemic , the efforts of our people resulted in the state GDP being among the top states, with a staggering 8% growth. We came out with innovative solutions in the field of healthcare and have been awarded the Arogya Manthan award.”
Stating that the report card is the song of its success, it said that with the NPP as the key partner of the government, an example of what could a collaborative effort at the right place can achieve if intentions are pure.
“Meghalaya has shattered the boundaries and has taken up this momentum of development which is not going to slow down any time soon. The state is not just dreaming now but endeavouring to fulfill them. We will build upon the progress made so far and plan for the next five years.”
Claiming to have improved the living standards of the people, the NPP said it was able to increase the average annual state expenditure from Rs 8875 crore in 2014-18 to Rs 13,205 crore in 2018-23. It said that new schemes and policies were launched to improve the living standard which include youth policy, FOCUS & FOCUS+, YESS Meghalaya, PRIME, Skills Meghalaya, Green Meghalaya and others.
It also said that several reforms and changes in the rules and acts related to taxation, transportation and mining have been implemented to enable enhanced tax collection adding that strong economic austerity measures were taken to ensure higher efficiency in government spending.
The report card said tax collection improved from Rs 1658 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 2412 crore in 2022
In the health sector, the NPP said that it was able to formulate the State Health Policy in 2021 through a 3 dimensional positive healthcare model for Meghalaya, implement MOTHER program benefiting 2.2 lakh mothers, CM Safe Motherhood Scheme for improving institutional delivery.
It said that the state water policy was also formulated and several water supply projects worth Rs 2700 crore were initiated to mitigate the water scarcity problems across the state besides spending over Rs 1800 crore for providing functional tap water connection to over 2.8 lakh households.
The NPP also claimed to have constructed more roads in five years than all past governments put together in 20 years.
In rural roads, 2,234 kms of roads were constructed during 2018-2022 whereas in 2014-18 only 700 kms of rural roads were constructed.
