LUCKNOW: A National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) centre is to come up at Rae Bareli. Spread over 10 acres, the centre will be housed on the campus of a unit of the National Textile Corporation (NTC) in the city.

This was announced by the Union Textile Minister, Shankarsinh Vaghela, at a function on Wednesday to mark the distribution of health insurance scheme cards to handloom weavers from Rae Bareli, Barabanki and Faizabad.

Rae Bareli is represented in the Lok Sabha by the UPA Chairperson and Congress president, Sonia Gandhi.

Mr Vaghela said the NIFT centre would be set up a cost of Rs.12 crores and it would enable the students to pursue their fashion technology course in Rae Bareli rather than looking out for other alternatives. The Union Textile Minister said the foundation stone of the centre would be laid soon.

He said his Ministry was seized of the proposal of reviving the sick British India Corporation textile and woollen mills in Kanpur, the erstwhile "Manchester of North India". The revival package of the BIC was in two parts. The first part dealt with the merger of BIC with the National Textile Corporation. The merger would be followed by modernisation and rehabilitation of at least two BIC textile mills with the revival cost being funded by NTC, he stated.

Mr. Vaghela said that of the 22 sick NTC mills in the country, 15 had been included in the Rs. 550-crore revival package. Though none of the 15 mills were from U.P., yet a couple of sick Kanpur mills would be accommodated in the revival package, but only after the merger of BIC with NTC.

Stating that the merger process had been initiated, the Union Minister said the revival programme was likely to be launched in October this year.

Laying emphasis on value addition in the handloom products and diversification in a bid to bail out the ailing handloom sector, the Minister said that after agriculture, handloom had the second largest employment generation potential.

He referred to the pathetic conditions in which the handloom weavers were leading their existence and acknowledged the fact that the Government was responsible for their plight. Mr. Vaghela added that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi were very much concerned about the handloom weavers' plight and efforts were being to ameliorate their sufferings.

The function was also addressed by the Union Minister of State for Home, Sri Prakash Jaiswal, UP Congress president Salman Khurshid, Congress Legislature Party leader Pramod Tiwari and All-India Congress Committee secretary in charge of UP affairs Praveen Rashtrapal. In fact, the revival of sick Kanpur mills was urged by Mr. Jaiswal, who is the MP from the industrial metropolis.

Later, addressing a press conference, Mr. Vaghela said a decision had been taken in principle to waive off Rs. 1000-crore handloom weavers' loan in the country.

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