North India’s first industrial biotech park inaugurated in Jammu’s Kathua

NEW DELHI: Union science and technology minister Jitendra Singh inaugurated north India’s first industrial biotech park at Kathua in Jammu on Saturday.

While inaugurating the park along with J&K LG Manoj Sinha, the Union minister said the biotech park would act as a hub for incubation of new ideas and a robust platform to support agri-entrepreneurs, startups, progressive farmers, scientists, scholars and students not only from J&K and Ladakh but also from nearby states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal.

Singh said this is the historic day for Kathua as its name is now listed among those developed regions of the country where biotech parks have been established, attracting innovations and research not only from the country but from across the world. He said Kathua, because of its resource richness and geographical location, is destined to be North India’s startup destination.

Hoping that the park at Kathua has a potential to produce 25 startups in a year, Singh informed that with the unlocking of space technology in the country under PM Modi, 60 startups have been established in only one and a half year. He said Onkar Singh, the young scientist from Jammu who was present at the occasion, is among the best examples of it.

Singh said the biotech park will carry out research on biodiversity, medicinal and aromatic plants of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, and it will also promote green category businesses.

He said that under PM Modi, the UT of J&K has seen a new dawn of development in education, health infrastructure, science and technology. The establishment of AIIMS, IIM, IIT, IIMC, space centre at Central University of Jammu, highway villages, express corridor, Atal Setu, mega-quintal seed processing plants, medical colleges, some of them have been established in Kathua, are some of the national-level development projects J&K has seen in the last eight years.