NEW DELHI: Home minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday that Rs 50,000 crore worth of investments could flow into J&K ushering in all-inclusive and all round development of the Union Territory as he launched a web portal for registration of units under the ‘Central Sector Scheme for Industrial Development of Jammu and Kashmir.'
“A new dawn of investment and industrial development will begin in J&K with the launch of this portal. Today, the most attractive industrial policy in the country is here (in J&K),” he said while addressing the event via video-conferencing. Shah added that the policy will boost investment in sectors like tourism, education and IT by offering incentives, create jobs for the locals and give a fillip to ancillary industries in a conducive “industrial eco-system”.
Joining in the event were J&K LG Manoj Sinha; commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal; MoS (home) Nityanand Rai; junior ministers for commerce & industry Som Prakash and Anupriya Patel; senior officials of the central and J&K governments; and industry representatives.
Speaking on the occasion, Piyush Goyal said the beginning of online portal & roll out of central sector schemes would further improve ease of doing business and bring all-round transparency.
The portal will make the entire process under the scheme i.e. applying for registration, submitting claims and their processing within the department, online and without any human interface.
Shah said that industries were shy of investing in J&K all these years due to some hurdle or the other, and the scrapping of Article 70 and Article 35A had removed these hurdles. He said the new central sector scheme for J&K was a huge milestone in fulfilling the promise made by the Prime Minister to the people of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019.
“Prime Minister had announced a package of Rs. 80,068 crore in Srinagar on November 7, 2015. (After nullification of Article 370 and 35A), one-nation-one-ration card scheme, Ujjwala, DBT, Saubhagya and many other schemes have been implemented in J&K,” Shah noted.
He added that all households in J&K would have clean water supply by August 15, 2022 and J&K was the only state where everyone was covered under the Pradhan Mantri Ayushman Bharat Yojana.
On the security front, Shah said there were record tourist arrivals in J&K this year and three-tier panchayat system polls were held without a single bullet being fired.
“To those who say that what is the difference (after nullification of Article 370), I want to say that in 70 years, previous governments could not provide even basic facilities such as housing, toilets, electricity and water to about 2,20,000 families of the state, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi provided all these…in 2 to 3 years,” he underlined.
Total financial outlay of the central sector scheme for J&K is Rs 28,400 crore and it envisages four types of incentives, namely, capital investment incentive, capital interest subvention; GST-linked incentive; and working capital interest subvention. It is expected to generate 78,000 direct employment opportunities.
