Srinagar: Minister of State (MoS) in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Jitendra Singh on Thursday said that a team of four Union Ministers will soon start visiting Jammu and Kashmir every week to review developmental work.
The Union Minister said that two ministers each will visit Kashmir Division and Jammu Division.
“We did an experiment in January when about 35 central ministers visited J&K. The ministers got good feedback from the people which enabled the centre to make various decisions… It was also great exposure for the people of J&K as well as the government officers,” Singh said this while addressing a two-day regional conference on ‘Replication of Good Governance Practices’ at S K International Conference Centre (SKICC) in Srinagar on Thursday.
He said the decision to send four Union Ministers to J&K every week was taken following a suggestion given by Lt Governor Manoj Sinha. “The LG suggested that instead of sending 35 ministers in one go, we should send ministers in small groups every week. This, he suggested, would enable them to interact with more people. So, we would be sending two ministers each to Kashmir and Jammu. We are already working it out with the Chief Secretary,” he added.
Singh said there would be a Common Eligibility Test (CET) for recruitment, which will start from this year. “Like the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, we will start the CET for recruitment in J&K. This ‘very important’ initiative has been made possible only because of a visionary Prime Minister like Narendra Modi. We were planning to roll out the CET by September, but got delayed due to COVID-1 pandemic,” he added.
Singh said there would be at least one centre in each of the 20 districts of J&K. “If required, on the suggestions of the J&K administration, there could be more than one centre also in a district,” he said.
He said a merit list will be made, adding it will be valid for three years so that there is no need for taking another test for this time and no money is to be spent. (UNI)
