Gorakhpur fertilizer plant & AIIMS: This is how city will become self-reliant in Urea & medical care

New Delhi: Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi will visit Gorakhpur on Tuesday and dedicate to the nation development projects worth over Rs 9600 crore on 7th December.

Two big projects will be inaugurated by PM Modi in the home turf of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Gorakhpur fertilizer plant

After remaining shut for more than 30 years, Gorakhpur fertilizer plant has been revived and built at a cost of around Rs. 8600 crore. Gorakhpur Unit of Fertilizer Corporation of India Limited (FCIL) was set up in 1969 for urea production with naphtha as feedstock. The plant was closed in June 1990 due to continuing losses of FCIL, stemming from technical and financial non-viability of operations, particularly high cost of Naphtha.

The demand for revival of the plant was more than two decades old. The apathy of previous governments towards the Purvanchal region led to neglect of the popular demand with no one taking any initiative for the fertilizer plant revival. Shri Narendra Modi in a rally in Gorakhpur ahead of Lok Sabha election 2014, had raised the issue of closed Gorakhpur fertilizer plant. After becoming Prime Minister, he worked towards the revival of closed fertilizer plants and laid the foundation stone for Gorakhpur plant revival in 2016.

The revived plant will supply Urea to farmers of Purvanchal Region of UP and to neighbouring States. It will help in generating direct as well as indirect employment for both skilled and unskilled manpower of the region. Plant will help in facilitating development of small and medium scale industries as well. It will also play a part in ensuring price stability in the domestic fertilizer market.

At present, against the annual demand of 350 lakh tonnes of urea, domestic production of urea is around 250 lakh tonnes. We are forced to import almost 100 lakh tonnes of urea, which also forces us to use precious foreign exchange reserves. This plant will not only help in saving precious foreign exchange reserves but also facilitate India’s march towards self reliance in the urea sector.

This Government has galvanized the revival of 5 fertilizer plants namely at Gorakhpur, Barauni in Bihar, Sindri in Jharkhand, Ramagundam in Telangana and Talcher in Odisha. These 5 plants have the potential to augment the country’s overall urea production by more than 60 lakh tonnes per annum.

Apart from these, the government has taken several steps to strengthen the foundation for a resilient fertilizer sector in India. These include introduction of the Fertiliser Management System to monitor operations across the value chain, Neem coating of urea to prevent leakage into non-farm uses, gas-pooling and making available gas to urea units to increase production efficiency, Direct Benefit Transfer system in fertilizers etc.

AIIMS, Gorakhpur

Prime Minister will also dedicate to the nation the fully functional complex of AIIMS, Gorakhpur which has been built at a cost of over Rs 1,000 crore. It would not only serve the districts of Purvanchal in UP, but also neighbouring Bihar & even Nepal.

Ever since independence, good healthcare was limited to the metros, with people thronging to these cities in search of a cure for their ailments. This was in essence due to regional imbalance in availability of quality, reliable healthcare. Dedication to the nation of yet another AIIMS reflects the constant endeavour of the NDA government to ensure provision of quality tertiary healthcare in all corners of the country, so that people are not forced to rush to faraway places in times of need.

This vision was reflected in Former Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Independence Day Speech on 15th August, 2003 when he announced the “Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana” (PMSSY) to establish 6 new hospitals with modern facilities like those available at AIIMS, New Delhi. These were set up at Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Patna, Raipur and Rishikesh.

Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has taken this vision one step ahead through the announcement of setting up of 15 AIIMS in different parts of the country in the last seven years. These are in various stages of completion and are situated all across the country at Gorakhpur (UP), Nagpur (Maharashtra), Kalyani (West Bengal), Mangalagiri (Andhra Pradesh), Bibinagar (Telangana), Bathinda (Punjab), Deoghar (Jharkhand), Guwahati (Assam), Bilaspur (Himachal Pradesh), Vijaypur (Jammu), Awantipora (Kashmir), Rajkot (Gujarat), Madurai (Tamil Nadu), Darbhanga (Bihar) and Manethi (Haryana).

Another facet of this focus of the government is reflected in the increase in budgetary allocation. The allocation for PMSSY was only Rs. 891 cr in 2014. It has been significantly enhanced by more than eight times to Rs.7517 cr in 2020-21.