BHOPAL: With the assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh being just around nine months away, the ruling BJP has started focusing on the Vindhya region – the saffron party’s lone bright spot in the otherwise dismal 2018 assembly poll results for it.
Just nine days after he announced the construction of the Vindhya Expressway to connect the state capital Bhopal with Singrauli in the Vindhya region, MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan made a slew of announcements for the Kol tribe, the largest tribal group in the Vindhya region, in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Satna district on Friday.
While maintaining that the government was determined to ensure the progress and pride of the Kol society, Chouhan said that the ancient Kol Garhi Fort of Kol rulers in Teonthar tehsil of Rewa district would be renovated at Rs 3.5 crore.
He further announced a Rs 1000 monthly dietary grant for Kol tribe women along the lines of a similar monthly sum already being provided to women of three ‘especially vulnerable’ primitive tribes: Saharia, Bharia and Baiga.
The MP CM further said that the government will provide the guarantee of providing bank loans to the youths of Kol tribe engaged in their own business and will also give them interest subsidy. While narrating the work done by the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre and the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led government in MP, Amit Shah said that the double-engine governments were determined to make every poor person in the state happy.
“PM Modi has done many important works for the development of scheduled castes and tribes. Before the Modi government assumed power in 2014, the Congress-led government spent Rs 24,000 crore for the tribals, but the Modi government increased the budget to Rs 90,000 crore,” he said.
“Earlier there used to be only 167 Eklavya Vidyalayas, the Modi government has increased this number to 690. Similarly, earlier there was a provision of Rs 2,000 crore for SC-ST category students, which has been increased to Rs 2,833 crore by the Modi government,” he added. Shah praised Chouhan for implementing all 14 tribal-specific announcements made at an event in Jabalpur in September 2021.
Shah also laid the foundation of 70 development projects worth Rs 507 crore and inaugurated 18 projects worth Rs 26 crore. Benefits were also distributed to the beneficiaries under various public welfare schemes. Shah, who started his day-long visit to the Satna district of MP’s Vindhya region by offering prayers at the famous Goddess Sharda Temple in Maihar, also inaugurated the Government Medical College in Satna later in the day.
Vindhya Region