President Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday inaugurated a smart model village pilot project at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Under the smart model village pilot project, five villages — Dhaula, Alipur, Harichandpur and Taj Nagar in district Gurgaon and Rojka-Meo in district Mewat of Haryana — will be developed as ‘adarsh gram’.
Mukherjee, while speaking at the function at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, said that every village should have a separate ‘Gram Sachivalaya’ to run the Government at village level, instead of one Secretariat at the State headquarters.
The President said that in the last four years of his Presidency, it was for the first time that he had the privilege of interacting with Sarpanches and village-level functionaries at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Since assuming office, he had been emphasising on opening the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the people. However, on Saturday he felt that Rashtrapati Bhavan had been truly opened to the public since the village representatives were present there, he added.
The President said, “It was only the representatives of the villages who could transform this country which has more than six lakh villages. Progress and development could be achieved at the desirable speed only in partnership with these decision-makers in the villages. There was also a need to empower women and youth”.
He expressed confidence that this initiative would not remain confined to these five villages, but would also spread to the entire country.
Notably, the President had announced this pilot project on the occasion of inauguration of the Intelligent Operations Centre (IOC) in Rashtrapati Bhavan and launching of a Mobile App ‘Monitor’ for transformation of President’s Estate into a smart township on May 19.
On the occasion, Union Rural Development Minister, Birender Singh, said that the President’s decision to adopt five villages and develop them as model villages had brought cheer to the villagers. He said that the 14th Finance Commission had made provision of Rs 2,00,292 crore for rural development, which would provide share of Rs 80 lakh to each village.
The proceedings were also broadcast live in these villages through webcast.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar lal, said that it had been decided to launch several new schemes, including ‘Haryana Swarna Jayanti Gramin Vikas Yojana’, ‘Swarna Jayanti Mahagram Vikas Yojana’, ‘Swarna Jayanti Vikas Nidhi’ and ‘Hamari Yojana-Hamara Vikas’, during the Golden Jubilee year of the state, from November .
A sum of Rs 275 crore has been proposed for 2016-17 for ‘Haryana Swarna Jayanti Gramin Vikas Yojana’, which has been prepared with a view to accelerate the pace of rural development in the State, he said.
Similarly, ‘Swarna Jayanti Mahagram Vikas Yojana’ has already been launched with the objective of planned and regulated development of villages along with provision of urban-like facilities in the villages having population of more than 10,000. This scheme would be implemented for three years, he added.
The Chief Minister said that devolution of assured package of funds to all Panchayats would be made annually on the basis of population under ‘Swaran Jayanti Vikas Nidhi scheme. Each Gram Panchayat would make an annual Development Plan under ‘Hamari Yojana–Hamara Vikas’ scheme which would seek to fulfill the critical gaps in infrastructure services and social indices as per the aspirations of the people.
Panchayats would be provided additional funds in the form of ‘performance grant’ for collecting revenue on the basis of recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, he added.