Gandhinagar:Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani today presided over the maiden meeting of the recently constituted Island Development Authority in which it was decided that 23 islands of the coastal state with an area of more than 50 hectares will be developed as tourist destinations in addition to ensuring their holistic development.

The Authority has been established by the Home Department recently.
Gujarat has a coastline of 1600 kms with and 144 islands in its vicinity.

Rupani said that the 23 chosen islands will be equipped with developed keeping in mind the tourism , environment, fisheries, agriculture and infrastructure sectors. In addition to that, the government will also focus on generating local employment and ensuring ample housing facilities.

The CM also suggested to identify such major projects that can be implemented keeping in mind the aforesaid sectors.

“In addition to developing these facilities, we also need to develop a dedicated task force for ensuring coastal security. I urge the Home Department to look into the same”, he said. Deliberations were held to obtain funds
for the tourism development in these islands under the Central Government’s Swadesh Darshan Yojana.

The task force committee would have Chief Minister as it head in addition to Deputy CM, Minister of Tourism and Environment, MoS for Home Department and 14 others as its members.

Deputy CM Nitin Patel, Minister of Environment Ganpatsinh Vasava, Minister of Tourism Javahar Chavda, MoS Home Pradipsinh Jadeja, Chief Principal Secretary to CM K.Kailashnathan, Chief Secretary Dr.J.N Singh, and secretaries of the concerned departments were also present in the meeting.

DeshGujarat