Varanasi, December 23
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday inaugurated or laid the foundation stones of 27 development projects worth Rs 2,095 crore in his Varanasi parliamentary constituency ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
This is Modi’s second visit to the holy city in 10 days.
After arriving here in the morning, he laid the foundation stone of the ‘Banas Dairy Sankul’ at the Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Authority Food Park, Karkhiyaon.
Spread across 30 acres, the dairy will be built at a cost of Rs 475 crore and would process about 5 lakh litre milk per day, according to officials.
This will strengthen the rural economy and help the farmers of the region by creating new opportunities for them, they said.
The prime minister also digitally transferred a bonus of about Rs 35 crore to the bank accounts of more than 1.7 lakh milk producers associated with the Banas Dairy. He also laid the foundation stone for a biogas-based electricity generation plant for a Milk Producers’ Cooperative Union plant in Varanasi’s Ramnagar.
Modi also launched a portal and a logo dedicated to the Conformity Assessment Scheme of milk products developed by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) with the help of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).
The unified logo, featuring both the BIS logo and the NDDB quality mark, will simplify the certification process for the dairy sector and reassure the public about dairy product quality.
In another effort to reduce the number of land ownership issues at the grassroots level, the prime minister virtually distributed the rural residential rights record, ‘Gharauni’, under the Swamitva scheme of the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj to over 20 lakh residents of the state.
The prime minister also inaugurated multiple urban development projects, including six for the redevelopment of Old Kashi wards, a parking-and-surface park at Beniabag, beautification of two ponds, a sewage treatment plant at Ramna village and the provisioning of advanced surveillance cameras at 720 locations under the Smart City Mission.
Projects in the education sector inaugurated by the prime minister include the Union Education Ministry’s Inter University Centre for Teachers’ Education, built at a cost of Ra 107 crore, and a teachers’ education centre at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, built at a cost of Rs 7 crore.
Further, residential flats and staff quarters at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and the ITI, Karaundi, were also inaugurated by the prime minister.
He also inaugurated a project comprising a doctors’ hostel, a nurses’ hostel and a shelter home, built at Rs 130 crore, at the Mahamana Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya Cancer Centre, a 50-bed Integrated Ayush Hospital at Bhadrasi.
The prime minister laid the foundation stone of the Rs 49 crore Government Homoeopathic Medical College in Pindra tehsil under the Ayush Mission.
In the road sector, Modi laid the foundation stone for widening four-lane roads to six lanes for Prayagraj and Bhadohi. This will improve the connectivity of Varanasi and will be a step towards resolving the problem of the city’s traffic congestion.
To give a fillip to the tourism potential of the holy city, the prime minister inaugurated the first phase of the tourism development project related to Shri Guru Ravidas Ji Temple, Seer Govardhan, Varanasi.
Other projects inaugurated by the prime minister include a speed breeding facility at the International Rice Research Institute, the South Asia Regional Centre, Varanasi, a regional reference standards laboratory at Payakpur village and an advocate building in Pindra tehsil.
The prime minister was here on December 13 too when he inaugurated the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor.
