With an eye on the large unemployed youth population in the state, the Congress has promised as many as 2 million new jobs, if the party bagged enough seats to form the next government in the country's most populous state.
This was spelt out in the much talked about and awaited Uttar Pradesh 'Vision Document', that was released by Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid at the UP Congress headquarters in Lucknow on Friday.
The 22-page document bearing the party tricolor hue, broadly offers social justice and security, right to education, healthcare and livelihood, besides comprehensive development.
"The Congress party takes a pledge to restore UP to its rightful place in the country; a UP that once again shows the entire country the way" goes the opening line of the document.
Even as the title talks about 'Vision for 2020', Khurshid sought to impress upon the all and sundry that the party was all set to ride on to power in the state where it last ruled about 23 years ago.
"We will create 20 lakh new jobs over a period of the next five years and that would our first step towards tackling the issue of distress migration," Khurshid told a crowded press conference.
Asked how he proposed to fulfill this tall promise, he said, "We are not talking off our hat. We propose to set up 1,000 skill development centres, besides revamping the polytechnics and ITIs spread across the state, so that we can equip a large number of youth with training that wil bring jobs to their doorstep."
He was hopeful of also generating large scale self-employment. The document also has in store a Rs 3,000 crore package for handloom weavers.
"Our plan is to set up a State Handloom Mission to bring in modern technology and to ensure forward and backward market linkages to enhance the income of weavers," the minister pointed out.
"Among the other necessary facilities that would be ensured is availability of subsidised and uninterrupted power supply to the weavers," he added.
He said, "We also wish to rationalise the reservation policy to make it more broad based and to ensure that the benefits of reservation trickle down to the lowest in the social rung".
The volatile issue of acquisition of agricultural land for industrialisation and urbanisation has also been handled vary carefully in the document, which makes it a point to clarify that "the new land acquisition policy will ensure judicious compensation to farmers."
"Nobody's land will be taken by force and the compensation would be such that the land owner's livelihood does not get affected, the minister said."
Embarking on the all-important issue of rampant corruption, Khurshid said, "As a part of our effort to introduce complete transparency in the working of the government, we are planning to put up a citizen's charter in all government offices whereby a time frame will be prescribed for delivery of all public services; strict action will be taken against those found guilty of corrupt practices."
Lamenting over the huge pendency of cases before courts, he said, "We also have serious plans to clear off the long list of cases pending before different courts within a period of three years."
Declaring that prices would also be kept under control, the minister claimed, "Food inflation had already been brought down to the minus level and now we have the Food Security Bill to ensure that 42 per cent of the country's population gets ration at subsidised rates."
The document also talks about "wide expansion of the road network across the state, besides ensuring adequate supply of power to not only industries but also domestic and agriculture sectors.
