Thursday, July 28, 2011

State gets Fazilka, Pathankot districts

Chandigarh The Punjab government on Wednesday announced the formation of two new districts — Fazilka and Pathankot — taking the number of districts to 22 from the current 20. Two more sub-divisions were also formed.

Addressing mediapersons, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, who headed the Cabinet meeting in place of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, said: "Fazilka will include three sub-divisions of Fazilka, Jalalabad and Abohar and three sub-tehsils of Arniwala, Shiekh Subhan, Sito Guno and Khuhian Sarvar. Headquarters of Fazilka district will be Fazilka City and it have 314 revenue villages."

The Pathankot district will include Pathankot and Dhar Kalan sub-divisions, besides the sub-tehsils of Naraut Jaimal Singh and Bamial. The headquarters of the district will be at Pathankot and comprise 421 revenue villages. The meeting also sanctioned the requisite staff for newly created districts.

The council of ministers also took a decision to upgrade Dharamkot in Moga district and Guru Harsahai in Ferozepur district as sub-divisions. While Dharamkot will have 150 villages, Guru Harsahai will comprise 166 villages. The Cabinet also sanctioned the requisite staff for the new sub-divisions. Also, two posts of additional deputy commissioners (Development and Litigation) have been created in Batala and Phagrawa so that people from those areas do not have to go to the district headquarters' for redressal of their grievances.

By taking all these decisions, the SAD-BJP government has fulfilled its promises made in the manifesto to the people of Punjab, said Badal.

He added that in a major step to clear the backlog of 75,000 tubewell connections, while 25,000 connections will be released as part of the General Scheme, 50,000 additional connections will be released as part of the Accelerated Release of Tube Well Connections (ARTC) scheme within three months.

Badal went on to add that during last four years, the SAD-BJP government had released 1,82,589 tubewell connections and with the release of 75,000 more, 2,57,589 connections will be released in the government's tenure.

This will be the highest number of connections released by any government in its tenure, he claimed. At present, there were 14 lakh tubewell connections in the state, out of which 11,43,267 were operated with power connections, said Badal.

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