Highlights
- Uttarakhand govt distributed portfolios to newly sworn-in ministers
- CM Dhami keeps maximum 23 departments, Satpal Maharaj gets 10, Dhan Singh Rawat 6
- The announcements have been a week after Dhami took oath as CM for the second time
Almost a week after Pushkar Singh Dhami took oath as Uttarakhand chief minister for the second time, the government on Tuesday announced cabinet porfolios to the newly sworn-in ministers.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has kept 23 departments with himself, while cabinet ministers including Satpal Maharaj has got 10 departments including PWD, Ganesh Joshi has 9, Dhan Singh Rawat, Saurabh Bahuguna, Chandan Ramdas and Premchand Agarwal have got 6 departments each, and Subodh Uniyal, Rekha Arya have got 4 departments each.
Earlier in the day, the first session of Uttarakhand's newly-elected Assembly began with Governor Lieutenant General (retired) Gurmit Singh's address to the House summing up the steps taken for the state's development during the current financial year and spelling out the development goals for the next fiscal.
Describing the improvement of health facilities as the state government's top priority, Singh spoke about the steps being taken to strengthen hospitals and increase the availability of doctors.
The governor also made a special mention of the Mukhyamantri Vatsalya Yojana, under which children who lost their parents or guardians to COVID-19 are to be paid a monthly allowance of Rs 3,000 up to the age of 21.
Talking about the innovations and experiments being made in the field of education, Singh said 189 Atal Utkrisht Government Secondary schools conceived as model schools have been made operational, besides the establishment of 14 new government colleges and money distributed among the students of government colleges through direct benefit transfer for buying tablet computers.
Villages with over 50 per cent of Scheduled Caste (SC) population have been selected for re-development under the Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana.
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