Education, health, farming: Prithviraj lists out priorities

A senior section engineer (SSE), in-charge of the carriage and wagon department (C&W) at the Nagpur railway station took ill after his boss gave a dressing down before a senior railway officer.

According to eyewitnesses, PC Gajbhiye, chief mechanical engineer (CME) with the South Central Railway, had arrived at Nagpur in 2721 Hyderabad-Nizamuddin Dakshin Express on Thursday morning.

SK Sharma, senior divisional mechanical engineer (SrDME) of In his first public appearance after being sworn in, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Friday spelt out his vision for the state — balanced development, with a stress on transparency in the system.

“With the help of our alliance partner, we will give priority to sectors such as education, healthcare, agriculture and infrastructure. Maharashtra should lead the country in every demographic parameter.” Chavan was speaking at the inaugural function of the All-India Vice-Chancellors’ Conference organised by the Bharati Vidyapeeth University (BVU) in association with University Grants Commission (UGC) and Association of Indian Universities (AIU).

Speaking at length about challenges such as water scarcity, food security, healthcare, energy crisis, global warming and gross enrollment ratio in higher education, he called for equitable growth with focus on good governance. “If you expand without good governance, there would be a question of equity and quality... There are challenges before the state as centres of excellence are concentrated in areas such as Pune, Mumbai or Nagpur. It raises the overall average rate of growth of the state. However, in tribal areas of Melghat in Vidarbha, deaths are taking place due to malnutrition. We cannot allow this to happen...”