india

Updated: Sep 22, 2019 11:13 IST

Manipur’s Chief Minister Nongthombam Biren Singh has said his government is planning to legalise cannabis for medicinal and industrial purposes.

The chief minister said during a press conference on Saturday that preparations are on to discuss the matter and make a decision in the next state cabinet meeting. He said cultivation of the plant needs to be done systematically so that it can be used strictly for medicinal purposes.

He said three states of Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh have already legalised cannabis for medicinal purposes.

Interestingly, Biren Singh also shared a report about a mother who sold her house to buy medicinal cannabis (extract of cannabis oil) for her wheelchair-bound daughter. He shared the report’s link on Facebook and said, “God must be crazy! Happy mother!”

To make the plan successful, he sought the support of people, intellectuals, civil society organisations and media in the state. “Then only we can make Manipur an economically and socially advance state,” he added.

Biren Singh said that the state’s tax revenue has steeply increased from Rs 587 crore in 2016-17 to more than Rs 1000 crore in 2018-19. He also informed that Manipur’s Gross State Domestic Product has doubled from 4% in 2016-17 to 8% in 2018-19.

Stating that the numbers show that under the present government there is economic growth in the state, Biren Singh said such pace of development and growth would transform Manipur into an advanced state in the near future.

The chief minister said the inflow of foreign tourists has been drastically increased from 500-600 tourists per year in 2015-16 to above 1000 tourists per month these days.

He also informed that a new program called ‘Stand-up Manipur’ would be introduced to provide soft loans to entrepreneurs belonging to the Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), Other Backward Class (OBC) categories and other minorities in the state.