Guwahati: The Assam government on Monday said trade licences will no longer be required for operating commercial institutes, barring some categories, as part of its initiatives under 'Ease of Doing Business.

 Announcing decisions of the Assam Cabinet meeting, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said several important issues pertaining to repealing of obsolete laws, revision of land premium rates, ensuring safety of workers, empowering law enforcers, and transparency in Guwahati Municipal Corporation polls were discussed.

"Henceforth, no trade licence will be required for running any commercial institute, except brick kilns, liquor shop, hospitals, schools and other industries with heavy pollution," as per a cabinet note shared by Sarma on Twitter.

It also said the government has decided to augment the corpus of contingency fund to Rs 2,000 crore from the existing Rs 200 crore to meet exigencies like natural calamities, the COVID-19 pandemic and other such events.

The cabinet also decided to abolish the concept of revenue towns, and all such places will now be treated as rural areas for the purpose of land revenue.

"Except the district headquarters and a few other important towns, the periphery of all other towns will be treated as rural area and land premium, etc, will be fixed as per notified rates of rural area," the note said.

 Among other decisions, the cabinet approved The Guwahati Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2022 for replacing paper ballots with EVMs, and gave the green signal to a proposal to raise Rs 142 crore from NABARD for the continuation of projects under various state government departments.