Chief Minister Conrad Sangma today laid the foundation stone for the Administrative City at New Shillong where the new secretariat building and other government offices will be shifted.
The laying of the foundation stone for the proposed project coincided with the celebration of the golden jubilee of Meghalaya’s statehood.
“A very important step that was taken today was the laying of the foundation stone for the New Administrative City. This has been a long pending requirement for Shillong city for the sake of de-congestion of Shillong city and also to see that we are able to have a planned administrative city in the future this project has been initiated,” Sangma said while addressing the statehood celebration virtually.
While the celebration was held at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium here, the chief minister addressed it virtually as he started developing cold symptoms after returning from New Delhi.
He also informed that over 800 acres of land has already been procured and within a few months the government will be starting some of the work in the acquired area.
“I am hopeful in the next decade we will be able to create a wide infrastructure so that we can shift to the new Administrative Secretariat soon,” Sangma added.
He also mentioned about the progress made in the efforts for settlement of boundary dispute with Assam in six areas of differences.
“Another big important point that we must all remember on this day is the long pending border issue that has been there in front of our State with Assam and I must thank all the past governments for all the hard work that they have done. The past chief ministers, the past ministers, the past government officials who have really worked hard to bring the issue to this level and it is in this government in the last six months we have tried to take that discussion to its logical conclusion,” Sangma said.
He said that in the last few months different committees were formed to visit the different locations, visiting each and every 36 villages in the first six areas of differences.
“And after the visit has been made, reports have been submitted to the respective state governments and the state governments have further submitted the reports to the Ministry of Home Affairs. I am hopeful that in the next few weeks and months we should be able to come to a concrete solution and a complete decision on the first six areas of differences,” Sangma said.
The chief minister said that in this coming year celebration of the 50th year of statehood, 300 projects will be inaugurated which is an average of one project a day.
He said that in this 50th year of statehood, the State government will be completing the Crowborough Hotel. He also said that within a few months, the State Assembly building will be completed and that in a few days he will also be inaugurating the Information Technology Park at Umsawli which will create 1500 jobs for the youth in the State.
Sangma said that Meghalaya has made great achievements in the road and infrastructure.
“We had 150 kms of National Highways when we started off as a State and today we have over 1000 kms of National Highways. We have seen great contribution in terms of giving functional household taps to different households where we were at 4500 households and today we are almost crossing two lakhs households,” he said.
He also said a great stride was made in rural connectivity, in PMGSY and MGNREGS works.
