The Himachal Pradesh government on Saturday decided to amend the Himachal Pradesh Town and Country Planning rules 2018 to allow sealing of unauthorised buildings or portions thereof, so that the authorised building could be put to its approved and permitted use.

The cabinet in its meeting held at Dharamshala under the chairmanship of Chief Minister, Jai Ram Thakur, decided that sealing would be done after giving the defaulters an opportunity of being heard under the amendment in the Act.

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This will give relief to the hoteliers and their objections will be invited under the rule. The cabinet accorded approval to grant interim relief to the regular government employees or pensioners or family pensioners at the rate of 8 per cent basic pay to be payable from 1st January 2016 as was announced by the CM on 25 January at Ani, in Kullu district.

This will benefit the employees and pensioners by Rs 700 Crore. The spokesperson said the cabinet decided to increase the maternity leave of women employees on contract basis from 135 days to 180 days, thus equating them with regular women employees in case of maternity leave.

The cabinet decided to invite Expression of Interest (EOI) for procurement of design consultant for carrying out a detailed feasibility study of 2,000 kilometres of road length under proposed World Bank assistance for HP state Roads Project Phase-II.

It was also decided for detailed engineering designs including socio-environmental and roads safety safeguards for 650 kilometers of road length in the state, besides periodic maintenance work of 1350 kilometers of road length of the state road network.