MANOHAR Lal Khattar, Chief Minister of Haryana, who will be in Vancouver on Friday, August 21, is known as a man of high principles with zero tolerance for corruption.
That is why Canadians can have confidence in dealing with him as he heads a delegation of 13 government officials and 18 leading industrialists to explore business partnerships in Canada from August 21 to 24.
Khattar wants to use information technology to minimize interface between people and the government and thus eliminate graft. With 40 years of active and dedicated public service to his credit, he is aware of the problems faced by the common man. He was also deeply involved in humanitarian rescue and rehabilitation efforts following the devastating earthquakes in Jammu and Kashmir, and Gujarat.
Khattar is regarded as a master political strategist. Under his chairmanship, the BJP won seven of the 10 Lok Sabha seats in last year’s election. Indeed, he’s credited with having played a key role in changing the course of his country’s history. In the state assembly elections that followed, the BJP made history by winning 47 out of the 90 seats. It was only in the fitness of things that Khattar was elected leader of the BJP Legislature Party.
No wonder, then, that as a first-time MLA he became chief minister and made history by forming the first-ever Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Haryana on October 26 last year.
During the last nine months that he has been Chief Minister, Khattar has ushered in a transparent and graft-free administration through e-governance; minimized marks for interviews at the time of selection for government appointments to curb the menace of nepotism; rendered citizen-centric services in a hassle-free manner to make the lives of the people easy and provided women a safe and secure environment. The “Beti Bachao Beti Padhao” [save your daughter, educate your daughter] campaign is a huge success and a big draw all over. His government has introduced a new enterprise promotion policy to give industrialization a big boost and new direction.
His government has also introduced a Sports and Physical Fitness Policy which aims at making sports a way of life in Haryana. In fact, just this week Khattar gave away cash awards worth more than $10 million [Rs.530 million] to 158 outstanding sportspersons of his state who excelled in various international events and won medals for India in events like boxing, wrestling and athletics.
Most of the public services in Haryana have been put in e-mode; land registration has been made easy and IT-enabled; construction of roads is now five times faster than what it was during the previous regime; the issue of long pending land acquisition cases in the high court has been resolved; and the long awaited Delhi-Faridabad Metro project has been successfully completed.
‘CM Window’ has been launched to redress the common man’s grievances. Secretariats have been set up in villages to help solve people’s day-to-day problems.
ON Tuesday, Khattar announced his state’s new industrial policy titled ‘Enterprises Promotion Policy 2015’ which envisages doing business with ease and enhancing competitiveness, and lays special focus on manufacturing and services enterprises with emphasis on balanced regional growth and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
The new policy aims at attracting investment of over Rs.1,000 billion [Rs. one lakh crore], create 400,000 jobs and accelerate economic growth to more than eight per cent.
Khattar said the new policy will catalyze Haryana’s position as a pre-eminent investment destination and facilitate balanced regional and sustainable development supported by a dynamic governance system and wide scale adoption of innovation and technology. It will also lay emphasis on skill development for nurturing entrepreneurship and generating employment opportunities.
He said that the new policy would make doing business hassle-free through a new industrial regime by automatic approval and decentralization in Haryana.
There will be a two-tier system for project clearances. A Haryana Enterprise Promotion Board (HEPB) will be created. The board will have a governing council headed by the Chief Minister for overseeing time-bound clearances, sanctioning special packages for mega projects and clearing further policy initiatives.
A system of online clearances will be put in place by creating an e-biz Haryana portal starting from October 1. Eighty-five services under Right to Service(s) Act have been notified under the revised Industrial Promotion Act for making a provision of deemed clearances and 36 services are proposed to be notified. The government has identified 68 most critical services for industries which will go online on eBiz portal by December 31.
Khattar said that a FINE (Financial Incentives and No Enhancements) Scheme would make industries competitive wherein steps would be taken to reduce the cost of doing business.
The fiscal incentives would include VAT refund, stamp duty refund, interest subvention, power tariff rebate, etc., amounting to Rs.10 billion [Rs.1000 crore], and a fund of Rs.10 billion for collateral free loans for MSMEs.
Among a raft of other things, the state government will set up a Skill Development University in collaboration with Union Ministry of Skill Development, skill development programs through identified training providers using existing infrastructure of government institutes on nominal lease with a minimum 70 per cent placement guarantee. The new policy proposes the creation of an ‘Innovation Campus’ at a cost of Rs.40 million [Rs.4 crore] and operational expenditure support of Rs.10 million [Rs.1 crore] for three years along with the creation of an additional seven incubation centers at the cost of Rs.3 milion [Rs.30 lakh] each in seven universities in Haryana.
The new policy proposes to set up an Application Development Center with an initial capital expenditure of Rs.40 million [Rs.4 crore] and an operational expenditure support of Rs.10 million [Rs.1 crore] for three years.
Rural BPOs [Business Process Outsourcing] centers will be set up in university towns like Rohtak, Hisar, Kurukshetra, Sonipat and Sirsa where appropriate skill development training will also be provided to rural / urban youth.
The new policy envisages connecting 6,000 villages with a broadband speed of 100 mbps with 99.9 per cent reliability.
The state has been divided into four categories of development blocks for incentive support.
For the benefit of existing industrial units and to minimize pending litigations, all the departments especially Excise and Taxation, Industries, Labour, Environment and Power, will bring out-of-court settlement schemes within a period of three months.
All the policy proposals will have to be notified by the departments concerned in one month from the date of release of this policy.
All the new schemes proposed in the policy will have to be formulated within a time frame of three months from the date of release of this policy. The online platform for project clearances will go online by December 31. Under the Saur Urja Nivesh, solar parks will be set up by Haryana’s Industry authority HSIIDC and power utilities on panchayat lands. The power generated by them will be purchased by the utilities.
There are many other aspects of this policy.
– The VOICE
