SHIMLA -4 June, 2025-Chief Minister Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu today honoured the winners of Science Quiz, Mathematical Olympiad, Innovative Science Model, Science Skill, Essay Writing and Slogan Writing competitions during the closing ceremony of the two-day 32^nd Himachal Pradesh State Level Children's Science Congress organized at Government College Dhaliara in Kangra district. About 600 child scientists and teachers from 12 districts participated in this programme.

For the promotion of science among the children, an amount of two crores was being received from the Central Government, but now that amount has been stopped. However the State Government assured that funds should not be any constraint for such programmes and made the funds available for Children's Science Congress. "I can see that the children seems to be confident enough and ready to accept future challenges and this thought is being instilled in them by their teachers who were equally contributing in shaping the future of children", he said.

To save the environment and take essential measures for the same the present Congress government in its first budget set the target of making Himachal Pradesh a green energy state by 31 March 2026 and we are heading towards achieving this goal, said he. We have introduced electric vehicles. Around 350 e-buses are going to be launched soon in HRTC in near future and the entire fleet of HRTC will be replaced by e-vehicles. He said that the Himachal would soon be pioneering in production of 'Green Hydrogen' paving the way for rest of the country.

The Chief Minister said that tough decisions were being taken in the interest of the State to strengthen its economy. The previous BJP government distributed freebies worth Rs 5,000 crore for political gain just before the elections. He said that buildings worth Rs 1,000 crore were constructed during the BJP regime which were left unoccupied and vacant. I assure that my Government will not let the wealth of the state be looted, siad Sh. Sukhu, adding that by taking by resorting to economy measures, the Government have earned additional revenue of Rs. 3000 crore in just two years by maintaining financial discipline, stated the Chief Minister.''

Shri Sukhu said that the state government was making efforts to bring about major improvement education sector and by next year we were going to implement CBSE pattern in 100 government schools.

In the previous BJP Government regime education sector suffered the most and declined rapidly due to which the enrollment touched its lowest ebb and the strength in schools decreased enormously. To cope up with the loss, the present state government is opening Rajiv Gandhi Day-Boarding Schools in a phased manner in every assembly constituency, many of which will be started by next year.

The Government is going to fill 967 TGT and PGT posts in near future. Apart from this, 1000 posts of JBT were being filled up to mitigate the shortage of teachers.

Detailing about the achievements of the State government he said that the Government fulfilled its election promise of giving OPS to 1.36 lakh employees to enable them to lead a dignified life after retirement. However, the Central Government imposed many types of financial restrictions for this. He said, "The Central Government was repeatedly asking us to implement UPS but the State Government is not going to back down from OPS."

Member Secretary HIMCOSTE, D C Rana welcomed the Chief Minister and detailed about the various activities of Himcoste.