CM’s reply on Vote of Thanks to Governor’s Address

Chief Minister Smt. Vasundhara Raje has said that she was ready to accept all challenges and fight them out to ensure the state’s development. “Where there is a will, there is a way,” she said further adding that for this she had confidence on herself and was sure that the State Assembly, the Opposition and the People of the Rajasthan would offer her cooperation on the decisions for development of the state.

On Thursday, during her reply to the debate on Vote of Thanks to the Governor’s Address in the State Assembly Smt. Raje said that the Governor not only listed the state government’s achievements of past one year, but also praised the efforts made by Team Rajasthan during past three years.

The CM said that the government had given pace to development all across the state without any partiality. She said that to give relief to people of Jhunjhunu Assembly region from the problem of fluoride, the government planned for supply of drinking water from the Kumbharam Lift Canal. For this region, the previous government spent only 23.74 crore rupees in five years, while her government spent 24.27 crore rupees in just three years.

Smt. Raje said that similarly, development works were of road construction, drinking water schemes, opening of college, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Agriculture Produce Market, separate service cadre for TSP region, scooty distribution for meritorious girls, setting up of Maharana Pratap Police Battalion initiated and completed in Nawalgarh, Osian, Banswara and Tribal regions of the state. Also, Senior Secondary schools were being opened at every Panchayat headquarter and Gramin Gaurav Paths were being constructed, she added.

The CM countered the allegations of celebrating the third anniversary of the state government saying that the events were arranged to present a report card to the people. She said that serious attempts had been made to resolve the issues of reservation to the Special Backward Classes, Other Backward Classes and the Jat Community in Bharatpur-Dholpur region. Committees had been constituted to study these matters in the chairmanship of Justices SK Garg, Anoop Goyal and Jitendra Goyal respectively.

Smt. Raje said that the previous government made announcements for 19 big drinking water projects, 16 irrigation schemes and 42 new colleges without making monetary provisions. Considering these announcements as the state’s responsibility, her government opened 32 of the 42 colleges, she said. She thanked Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi for the new crop insurance scheme and said that the state government kept a provision of 1066 crore rupees. She said such a huge allocation attracted the PM’s praises as well. She added that it was for the first time that the limit of crop damages to be compensated was reduced from 50% to 33% under the National Disaster Relief Fund. She said that participation of 55,000 farmers in the Global Rajasthan Agritech Meet made this event a huge success.

The Chief Minister said that Per Capita Income (PCI) would give an idea of the prosperity of any state. Rajasthan scaled new heights in this with the PCI of Rajasthan shooting upto over double from 27,000 rupees in year 2013-14 to Rs 57,000 rupees for the year 2015-16.

Smt. Raje said that her government inherited a debt of 80,000 crore rupees on the power distribution companies from the previous government, for which 8,000 crore rupees were being paid as yearly interest. To save farmers from the burden of increased power tariffs, the state government decided to own this up. The previous government gave only 9,000 crore rupees as subsidy for power during its tenure of five years, against which her government allocated 24,000 crore rupees towards subsidy for just three years. She said that in the days to come, under this head, the state government would bear an additional burden of 8,500 crore rupees every year. This would be the highest subsidy being paid by any state government in the country, she added.

The CM called upon everybody to participate and join each other for progress and prosperity of the state and quoted Henry Ford to say,

“Coming together is the beginning, staying together is progress an working together is success.”

After the CM’s address, Motion of Thanks to the Governor was passed with a voice vote in the house.

Jaipur, 2nd March 2017