Budget session from January 17

RANCHI: After a year of wooing investors and formulating new policies to fan industrial growth, the state government is now ready to plan the budget for financial year 2018-19. The state cabinet on Tuesday announced to hold the budget session of the assembly from January 17.
“The Jharkhand cabinet has given its approval and is ready to hold the budget session from January 17 till February 7,” an official told reporters on Tuesday.The state’s annual budget for financial year 2018-19 is scheduled to be tabled in the assembly on January 23. The state’s budget outlay for 2017-18 was Rs 75,673 crore.
Jharkhand was the first state in the country to have tabled the 2017-18 general budget in January this year. Besides giving its nod to the budget session, the state cabinet also approved more than a dozen proposals. The government agreed to handover land for setting up of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Deoghar. This project was sanctioned in the 2017-18 state budget.
The cabinet also gave its nod to provide 236.92 acres of land in Devipur and another 35.27 acres of land to the Union ministry of health and family welfare. A senior official in the state government said the Union government had recently prepared a detailed project report (DPR) for AIIMS which is to be set up at Devipur.
The institute, the official said, is expected to become operational within two-and-a-half years. An official in the state health department said the central government has also prepared a cabinet note for sanctioning of the project. Besides these, the cabinet also took decisions on the installation of solar street lights from legislators’ funds and implementation of the Gift Milk Scheme to curb malnutrition in the state. The Gift Milk Scheme was launched by chief minister Raghubar Das in Latehar in November. While launching the scheme, Das spoke on the need for a white revolution in Jharkhand. The state government aims to achieve 38 lakh metric tonnes of milk production in Jharkhand by 2024. It also plans to observe 2018 as children’s health year. The Gift Milk Scheme is expected to cover 10 districts of the state and provide free and nutritious milk to more than 1lakh children across the state