Govt to hand Jaipur, Mysore, Itanagar ITDC hotels over to states

Sanjeev Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, September 20

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved proposals to hand over three more Indian Tourism Development Corporation hotels to state governments and merge government printing presses.    

Addressing the press after a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the Cabinet had decided that central government would hand over operation of three ITDC hotels — at Jaipur, Mysore and Itanagar — to state governments, months after they were handed over for redevelopment.

The Cabinet also decided to undertake rationalisation, merger and upgrade of government printing presses that were established in 1963 and are currently under-worked. Some 17 printing presses will now be merged to make five, which will be used only when necessary, the finance minister said. Additional employees will be deployed at the new printing presses.

The decision will free 468 acres of land in the central pool, Jaitley said.

The Cabinet also raised allocation for a scheme to provide nutrition to children, adolescent girls and pregnant woman under ICDS by Rs 12,000 crore over three years.

The rates of the scheme — which comes under the Food Security Act and is one of the largest such programmes in the world with 11 crore beneficiaries — was last fixed in 2012.

The Cabinet has extended ‘The Udaan Yojana’, a scheme that aims at skill development in the private sector in Jammu and Kashmir, up to December 31, 2018.

It also approved 78 days productivity bonus for non-gazetted railways employees following a previous precedent — an addition of six days to the central government’s formula of 72 days.

The Cabinet has also approved make over of the Khelo India scheme, and also considered a proposal to have annual reports for various schemes under the National Health Mission.