Govt not keen to establish science centre in Srinagar
It seems that the administration of Jammu and Kashmir is reportedly not interested in establishing a ‘science centre’ in Srinagar despite green signal from the union government.
“The project fails to start as J&K government has not released the amount of its share as well as failed to identify suitable land for the project,” this was revealed in Lok Sabha on Monday by ministry of culture.
As per the reports, the project was sanctioned by Union Ministry of Culture in August 2015 and assured all assistance from National Council for Science Museums (NCSM).
National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), an autonomous organization under the Ministry of Culture, GoI, as implementing agency, has taken up projects for setting up of Science Cities/Science Centres under the Scheme for Promotion of Culture of Science (SPoCS) of GoI in various states/UT in India.
The ministry of culture in its reply in the parliament on Monday has shared that as part of the initiative, the NCSM has taken up Science Centre (Cat-II) in Srinagar. The project gas been approved by the ministry of culture(MoC), for which the memorandum of understating(MoU) has also been signed. Out of total 1820 lakh project cost, the GOI will be bearing the 100% capital cost of 1400 lakhs. The remaining 420 lakh of corpus funds are to be shared between GoI and J&K government in 20:80 ratio, which means that J&K government has to shell 336 lakhs while remaining 84lakhs are to be borne by GoI.
It translates that the ambitious science project has been a non starter due to failure of J&K government to its share of 3.36 crore.
The NCSM has not issued the work order yet, due to the delay by the J&K government to release its corpus share and failure in site development
The project will take 27 months to complete from the date of issue of letter of interest(LoI) for construction work.
The centers have been taken up for portraying the growth of science and technology and their application in industry and human welfare, with a view to develop scientific attitude and temper in the country as also to conduct research in science and technology in the areas pertaining to the activities of the Council.
