Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday urged the Centre to treat the Narmada dam as a national project. He also made a case for evolving a strategy to protect the Asiatic lion and giving similar importance to lions as was being given to tigers in the country.At a meeting between the Gujarat Government and the Planning Commission to finalise the annual plan for the year 2008-09 for the state, the CM expressed his concern on why the Narmada project, which was originally conceived by Jawaharlal Nehru, was continuously being ignored by the Centre. Modi asked the Centre to treat the project— which involves more than three states—as a national project.At the meeting, where the annual plan for 2008-09 was pegged at Rs 21,000 crore — a hike of over 31 per cent as compared to the plan size of Rs 16,000 crore for 2007-08— attention was drawn to the deterioration seen on the nutrition front as well as in the decline in the enrolment rate for higher education.The CM is learnt to have pointed out that the decline in enrolment rate for higher education was partly on account of youth in the state opting for courses in skill development. He said the state would make efforts to improve the human development index through investments in human capital as well as through focused attention on the unorganised sector.Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, on his part, said the state’s growth rate at 10.4 per cent during the Xth Plan period was far higher than the national average and going by the current trend, the target to clock 11 per cent growth would be achieved.Outlining the focus areas for the state, Modi told the deputy chairman that the state would launch specific programmes for deprived sections to make growth more inclusive. He said a new pension scheme would be introduced by the state for which a consolidated sinking fund had already been created to take care of the future liabilities.As part of the Centre’s National Solar Mission, the CM said Gujarat Government was planning to make Gandhinagar a solar city, and to this end, the state had already provided for Rs 100 crore.
