Himalaya Harbinger, Uttarakhand Bureau.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Thursday handed over appointment letters to 178 candidates selected through the Uttarakhand Public Service Commission (UKPSC) for various departments of the state government.
The letters were distributed at a programme held at the Chief Minister’s camp office in Mukhya Sevak Sadan. The recruits include 117 candidates for the Economics and Statistics Department, 12 for the Agriculture Department, 30 for the Horticulture Department and 19 for the Women Empowerment and Child Development Department.
Addressing the newly appointed candidates, Dhami said he expected them to perform their duties with honesty and diligence, and to contribute to the state’s development agenda. He said their work would be important in advancing Uttarakhand’s goal of becoming a more self-reliant and leading state in the country.
Emphasising the role of reliable data in governance, the Chief Minister said that quality, credible and timely statistics form the basis for designing, implementing and evaluating public schemes. As the nodal department for data collection and analysis in the state, he noted, the Economics and Statistics Department plays a central role in this process. Dhami said assistant statistics officers should provide evidence-based feedback on the impact of government policies and schemes so that corrective steps, wherever needed, can be taken in time.
The Chief Minister also linked the current round of appointments to broader recruitment and employment measures taken in recent years. He said that in the past four and a half years, more than 26,000 young people had been given opportunities in government service through what he described as a transparent process, and that this figure was more than double the recruitment recorded in comparable periods under previous governments since the formation of the state.
Dhami referred to the enactment of a stringent anti-cheating law targeting “nakal mafias” involved in examination malpractices and paper leaks. According to him, the law has helped improve transparency, speed and reliability in recruitment examinations conducted in the state.
Alongside government jobs, the Chief Minister highlighted various self-employment and entrepreneurship schemes. He cited the Mukhyamantri Swarozgar Yojana, the new start-up and entrepreneurship policy, the new tourism policy, and measures related to agriculture, fruit cultivation and homestay promotion as initiatives through which the state government aims to create wider employment and self-employment opportunities. Dhami said that, as per government data, these efforts have coincided with an increase in “reverse migration” to hill areas, with more people reportedly returning to start income-generating activities in their home regions.
The Chief Minister told the new appointees that their work in departments such as agriculture, horticulture and women empowerment would intersect directly with rural livelihoods, nutrition, and social welfare programmes, and urged them to be responsive to field realities and citizen feedback.
Those present at the programme included Kalki Peethadheeshwar Acharya Pramod Krishnam, Cabinet ministers Ganesh Joshi and Rekha Arya, Rajya Sabha MP Naresh Bansal, MLAs Bharat Chaudhary and Savita Kapoor, vice-chairperson of the 20-Point Programme and Implementation Committee Jyoti Prasad Garola, Principal Secretary R. Meenakshi Sundaram, Secretary S.N. Pandey and other senior officials.
