Union Minister of Rural Development, Sanitation and Drinking Water, Birender Singh on Friday announced that Gram Panchayats would be given a minimum of Rs25 lakh in a year for development of basic infrastructure and Rs1.25 crore would be given to every panchayat in five years.
The villages that would achieve the target of campaign of construction of toilets in every home, facilities like electricity, water, paved streets, modern higher education schools would be provided and additional grant of Rs five lakh would be given to such villages under MGNREGA, said the Union Minister while speaking at ‘Vikas Parv Samaroh’ in Bhiwani.
He said that the Central Government would give cash award of Rs1lakh to the village which will be open defecation free.
Singh said that under ‘Swachhta Abhiyan’, a campaign has been launched to construct toilets. Under this drive 76 per cent work has been completed. Under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, every such person would be given grant for the construction of house who does not have house. The condition of beneficiary being a BPl family has been withdrawn and grant money of Rs70,000 has been increased to Rs1.50 lakh. In the next three years, the Central Government has a target of construction of one crore houses in villages under the scheme, said he.
The Union Minister also said that 1.34 lakh kms long roads would be constructed by 2019 under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) to connect all villages in the country with main roads.
He said that earlier, this project was to be completed by the year 2022, but keeping in view the pace of construction of roads, now all villages would be linked by 2019.Earlier, 73.5 kms road length used to be constructed in one day, but now it is 100 kms every day. This would be further increased to 130 kms everyday. In two years tenure of Central Government, 46,000 kms roads have been constructed, said he.
He added that Rs40 crore would be released for water management in areas like Bhiwani and Mahendragarh.