Tribune News Service

Dehradun, March 28

The state government may soon give shape to the proposal of carving out four new districts.

An indication in this regard was given by Chief Minister TS Rawat on Wednesday. During the Assembly session at Gairsain, the Chief Minister, while talking to mediapersons, said the government would take an appropriate decision based on the recommendations of the Districts Reorganisation Commission. “A corpus of Rs 1,000 crore was set up by our government for this purpose soon after it came to power last year. We will follow the recommendations given by the commission in this regard,” he said.

In 2011, the issue of carving out four new districts of Kotdwar (Pauri Garhwal), Yamunotri (Uttarkashi), Raniketh (Almora) and Didhaat (Pithoragarh) was taken up by the then BJP government led by Ramesh Pokhriyal. He had made an announcement in this regard on the Independence Day.

However, before a government order could be issued, Pokhriyal was replaced by BC Khanduri as the state Chief Minister.

The Khanduri government issued an order for the creation of new districts on December 8, 2011. However, the matter was delayed again in the wake of the Assembly elections.

In 2012, the Vijay Bahuguna-led Congress government came to power, which pushed the issue on the back burner. However, it assigned the task of identifying new districts, new tehsils and new administrative units to a newly constituted reorganisation commission under the revenue board.

In 2014, when Harish Rawat replaced Vijay Bahuguna as the Chief Minister, he also spoke of creating not four, but eight new districts. However, this never happened.

Now with the General Election slated for 2019, the BJP government under TS Rawat is once again showing interest in the issue.

Pokhriyal govt took decision