Speeding up the land acquisition process for major infrastructure works in the district will be a focus area for the newly appointed Pune district collector Chandrakant Dalvi who took over from former district collector Prabhakar Deshmukh on Monday. With nearly 2,000 cases pending with 17 land acquisition officers, Dalvi plans to speed up the "disposal of the cases' in the district. "I have already told my land acquisition officers to brief me about the cases and my priority would be to speed it up,' he told the media on his first day in office. "No case should be pending on any table for more than seven days and I would want to follow this in my office in letter and spirit,' he said. With 65 per cent of the city in the urbanisation mode, Dalvi said he would make sure his administration is trained to clear proposals as Pune is leading in IT and auto sector. "We would ensure that regular meetings are conducted where every department is trained to dispose of cases at the earliest, so that development is not hampered,' he said. The issue of central funds not being utilised will also be addressed and targets of each project should be met with, he said. The district planning and development committee budgetary provisions would help execute the projects soon, he said. With three months of monsoon in hand for providing employment for the agrarian labour under the Maharashtra Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Dalvi plans to create awareness among the masses. "I want that my department to scale up the programme that was started in April this year,' he said. Dalvi said that he would push for 100 per cent voter registration and issue of photo identity cards in the district. "I have been told that there is 70 per cent implementation in rural areas and 50 per cent in urban areas and this has to go up in the second phase that will commence in August,' he added. Disaster management and issues concerning Citizen Facilitation Centre as well as ensuring maintenance of law and order are the other issues that the new district collector has promised to tackle. Earlier, the outgoing district collector Prabhakar Deshmukh welcomed the new collector and briefed him about the programmes he had implemented during his four-year tenure. Deshmukh said that he was happy with the implementation of the Gao Bhet yojana, which saw officers visiting villages to clear the pendency of cases, integrated farming project, the Self Help Group bank linkages, employment programmes and SEZs rehabilitation policy for villages in the district. Agriculture initiatives Prabhakar Deshmukh, who has been appointed agriculture commissioner for the state, said that he would want to keep protection of food security as a base for implementing schemes. "I would want to implement various programmes under the National Horticulture Mission as well as introduce changes in the cropping pattern and seed production,' he said. The other project he is mulling is the river-nullah linking scheme to make sure that there is enough water for Vidarbha and Marathwada regions.