The Vidarbha Economic Development Council (VED) held its Annual General Meeting on Sat. 8th Aug. 2020 The VED Sankalp was read out by Malhar Deshpande. Shivkumar Rao, President, warmly welcomed the members on this 26th AGM making the introductory remarks.
Rahul Upganlawar read the actions of the minutes of the last AGM highlighting the SME onference in Nov 2019 with Nitin Gadkari as Chief Guest and informed that we would work on employment-generation. Shivkumar Rao read the President’s Report for 2019-2020.
Shivkumar Rao informed about a few of the work done during the year. Recommendations to a draft mining policy worked on by VED were submitted by the MSMC to the GoM, were awaiting announcement, as also a framework for a minerals cluster near Nagpur for which MSMC identified a parcel of land and informed the GoM, which was still to be notified by the GoI and GoM, and the demand was also for a steel cluster. Apart from these, headway had also been made in the setting up of institutions like the IIIT and NIPER (National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education & Research) which had been allotted land after rigourous VED follow-up. NIPER coming up in 100 acres of land, would enable the pharma sector to invite 20-25 industries to this region.
Future plans included, especially, the formation of Thrust Areas (TAs) and their core committees that would do SWOT analyses and try to rectify problems in their respective areas. The TAs were decided as Mines & Minerals, New Investments & Emerging Opportunities, Education, Agriculture (fisheries, dairy, agro-processing), Tourism and Environment. He urged all members to share their ideas, participate in their areas of interest, and fulfill their desire of contributing to the region.
D. Parekh announced the new Office-bearers.
Sr  Name                    Designation
1   Shivkumar Rao - President
2   Devendra Parekh - IPP
3Â Â Â Pankaj Mahajan – Â Vice-President
4   Pradeep Maheshwari - Vice-President
5   Rahul Upganlawar - Vice-President
6Â Â Â Varun Vijaywargi – Â Secretary General
7   Navin Malewar - Treasurer
8   Atul Tajpuriya  – Joint Secretary
9Â Â Â Dinesh Naidu – Â Joint Secretary
10 Malhar Deshpande - Joint Secretary
The following members were inducted into Executive Committee – Amitabh Sinha, Dipankar Moitra, Dr. Kapil Chandrayan and Dr. T S Rawal.
Last but not the least, Shivkumar Rao acknowledged appreciation and expressed his deep gratitude to the VED members who donated an amount of Rs, 10,50,000 to the Red Cross Society and 15,000 surgical masks and 1000 PPE kits to local medical institutions towards the corona cause.