Union Minister for Communications and Development of North Eastern Region Jyotiraditya Scindia on Wednesday said that India's 36 States and Union Territories are like a train and under the dynamic vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the North Eastern Region has certainly become the engine of that train on the way to a developed India in 2047.
In an exclusive interview with the news agency in Delhi, Scindia said that in the last 65 years, the Northeast was deprived of development and progress and it is only in the last 11 years that there has been a real change in the region, be it in the areas of roads, railways, air services, healthcare, social security etc.
The Union Minister said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited the North Eastern region 70 times, which is a record in itself. If you collect all the visits of all the Prime Ministers of India in the last 65 years, then even they have not been able to visit the North Eastern region so many times.”
He further said that along with this, the government has also invested Rs 5 lakh crore to promote development in the North Eastern regions. Road, rail and air services are being given attention. Earlier there were nine airports in the North East. Whereas, today 17 airports have been built. For 65 years, states like Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim did not even have a single airport, but due to the efforts of the Modi government, today there are four airports in Arunachal and one airport in Sikkim.
While talking about road infrastructure, the Union Minister said that earlier there were 10,000 km of highways in the North East, now it has increased to 16,000 km. In rural areas, 40,000 km of roads were built with an amount of Rs 50,000 crore and the same is the case with railways. Nearly 2,000 km of railways are currently being constructed. The Modi government is committed to providing rail services in eight north-eastern states. For this, the government is spending Rs 80,000 crore. Today, there is rail service in five north-eastern states. We are committed to providing rail services in the remaining three states by 2027.
Today, the longest road bridge in the country, Bhupen Hazarika Bridge of four and a half kilometers has been commissioned and the world's longest road cum rail bridge, Bogie Mail Bridge of nine and a half kilometers has been commissioned. These are such records of the North Eastern states, which we could not even imagine. Similarly, in the social sector, in the field of health, in the field of education, in every sector, Prime Minister Modi's goal has been to make the eight North Eastern states the growth engine of the country.