Chief Minister, Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu while on his visit to Delhi, today met Union Minister of State, Science & Technology, Space and Atomic Energy, Dr. Jitendra Singh and held deliberations regarding strengthening of agriculture, horticulture and health sector by adopting modern techniques and by making best use of science and technology. Chief Minister said that State Government mulls to set up department of nuclear medicine in one of the medical colleges of the state so that facility of radiation therapy could be provided to the cancer patients saving their time and resources. The need of the hour was to adopt modern scientific methodology of farming instead of practising traditional methods, said the Chief Minister and urged for providing technological support for the same. He also requested for providing support to the officers of horticulture and agriculture departments of the state besides organising orientation programmes for them, so as to enable them to be more familiar with new innovative technology. He also requested to get organised training for the farmers and horticulturists to make them acquainted with the new techniques.
These new techniques will help farmer and horticulturalists in improving the quality of their produce. Chief Minister advocated to include Chamba district under ‘Aroma Mission’ for cultivation of Lavender plants and to provide technological support to the farmers for the same. Keeping in view the vulnerability of the state to earthquakes the Chief Minister requested for establishing a high tech seismic laboratory cum data analysis centre in Kangra and Hamirpur seismic zone. He apprised Dr Jitendra Singh that as the State was more prone to natural calamities, there was a need for setting up Doppler Radars in the two tribal districts of Kinnaur and Lahaul Spiti, besides establishing weather observatories at Hamirpur, Chamba, Nalagarh, Keylong and Kaza regions along-with a data centre in Hamirpur district in order to strengthen disaster response, analysis and dissemination of weather information. This will not only help save lives but will give timely weather information to farmers and horticulturalists of the State. Dr Singh lauded the concern of Chief Minister towards Himalayan ecology and his keen interest in science and technology. He assured of all possible support. Bharat Khera, Principal Secretary to CM, Meera Mohanty Resident Commissioner, Vivek Bhatia Principal Private Secretary to CM were also present in the meeting.
