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Dhumal bid to woo apple growers

SHIMLA: In a bid to woo the influential lobby of apple growers in the upper Shimla area, Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal announced massive infrastructural upgrading plans for the region over the weekend.

He launched an ambitious Rs.228-crore road widening project from Theog, the entrance to the rich apple-growing belt which ends at Rohru, the constituency of former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh. This road, from where thousands of fruit-laden trucks pass every year, was grossly neglected by the previous government.

The ambitious project is being funded by the World Bank and executed by Longjivan Road and Bridge Limited Company of China to further improve the road width to nine metres in rural areas and 9.4 metres in the typical urban sections. “This would match any international standards,” said Mr. Dhumal.

He also laid the foundation stones for various lift irrigation schemes, parking lots, regional horticulture offices, horticulture office-cum-farmers’ training centre-cum-hostels and soil testing and leaf testing laboratories worth crores of rupees in the apple-growing region of Kotkhai and Jubbal.

The Chief Minister also announced plans to upgrade a number of health and educational institutions and said that Rs.10 crore would be spent on construction of a processing plant in the area so that value-added apple products were carried across for the benefit of the fruit growers.

He allocated more funds for projects in the Jubbal-Kotkhai area during the current financial year and said 95 new habitations would be provided adequate drinking water while more roads would be constructed in the segment. Jubbal-Kotkhai sends the lone BJP MLA from upper Shimla district, Narender Bragta, who is also the Horticulture Minister of the State.

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