By IANS
Gadchiroli (Maharashtra) : Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh honoured 102 outstanding teachers in the state with the best teacher award here Wednesday amid huge deployment of police force in one of the worst Maoist violence affected districts.
The award-winning teachers were touched by the chief minister’s gesture of felicitating each one of them, individually, with sandalwood garlands, shawl and ‘shreephal’ (coconut) on the occasion of the Teachers’ Day.
The chief minister reviewed the developmental works in the district earlier in the day and reiterated the state’s commitment to expeditiously facilitate setting up of a long promised Surajgarh sponge iron project in the district’s Maoist-affected Etapalli sub-district.
Steel major Lloyd Steel had bagged a contract to extract iron ore from Surajgarh but set up its plant in the adjacent Chandrapur district, which is seen as safer.
Deshmukh announced that all unfilled posts in the district’s government departments including the police would be filled soon.
A large number of vacancies, partly attributed to the Maoist threat in the forest-rich region, have severely impeded developmental works.
A Maoist group has threatened to enforce a shutdown in Gadchiroli and the adjacent Gondia district Friday to protest the arrest of their state committee leaders in Mumbai last month.