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“Public transport will be the priority”

- Photo: Sandeep Saxena

Budget session begins: Lieutenant-Governor Tejendra Khanna, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Delhi Assembly Speaker Yoganand Shastri on the opening day of the Budget Session on Monday.

NEW DELHI: The Budget Session of the Delhi Assembly began on Monday with the Lieutenant-Governor Tejendra Khanna declaring in his address that the road transport sector continues to be a priority area for the State Government.

Mr. Khanna -- who came to the House in ceremonial style along with Speaker Yoganand Shastri -- said the Government would take measures to ensure that all ongoing projects are completed speedily and social sector development would be the cornerstone of all its activities.

As for the transport sector, he said, the Plan outlay for the financial year 2008-09 was Rs.1241.86 crore and almost 99 per cent of the amount was used. “In the current financial year, the thrust will be on further improvement of the public transportation system and development of infrastructure through expansion of the Mass Rapid Transit System,” he said.

With nearly 120 km of metro railway line being added before the Commonwealth Games next year, the total length of the network would go up to 185 km, he said.

The L-G also announced that 3,800 new buses are proposed to be purchased in time for the Commonwealth Games. These would include both low-floor and semi-low-floor buses. This, he said, would provide public transport a competitive edge over private transport. The plan is to augment the public fleet to 6,600 buses to meet the requirements of Delhiites.

On phasing out of Bluelines, he said: “We have also decided to corporatise the private stage carriage buses to eliminate the nexus of individual operators. The process of phasing out of Blueline buses would be started immediately.” Further, to reduce congestion at the existing Inter-State Bus Terminals, two new ISBTs have been proposed at Dwarka and Narela. Modernisation of the existing ISBTs at Kashmere Gate, Sarai Kale Khan and Anand Vihar is also proposed.

The L-G’s address also elaborated on works being undertaken in the health sector. He said construction of a large number of dispensaries and hospitals had been undertaken. The Delhi Government had also introduced three vaccines -- Hepatitis B, Typhoid and MMR -- in the routine immunisation programme of Delhi to arrest mortality and morbidity among children.

In the power sector, he said, construction of various power plants under way at present would provide 2,250 MW of additional power. On the distribution front, the power reforms have been yielding rich rewards and the aggregate transmission and commercial loss level which was over 50 per cent at the time of privatisation of distribution had come down to less than 20 per cent in 2008-09.

The L-G noted that while the reduction of losses in case of BSES Rajdhani had been from 48 per cent to 21 per cent, and in case of BSES Yamuna from 57 per cent to 24 per cent, NDPL has performed exceedingly well reducing its losses from 48 per cent to 15.

As for water, Mr. Khanna said that with the release of 40 million gallons per day by Haryana the full requirement of raw water for the Nangloi water treatment plant was met and now the matter of the Bawana water treatment plant of 20 MGD was also being taken up with Haryana. “It is expected that additional water would become available to us in the near future,” he said.

To improve the living conditions of people in unauthorised colonies, Mr. Khanna said a special fund with an outlay of Rs.2,800 crore had been created and during 2008-09 an amount of Rs.743 crore was released for these colonies.

Finally Mr. Khanna said the Government was committed not only to maintenance of peace and social harmony but to providing better fiscal discipline and giving a citizen-centric governance.

For the first time in many years there was no disruption of the L-G’s address by the Opposition.

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