BS Malik
Sonepat, April 23
The message from today’s state-level Panchayati Raj Sammelan in Gohana was loud and clear: “Development of villages and corruption-free governance in Haryana”.
“The Centre is committed to double the income of the common man in villages by 2022. The Narendra Modi government has realised that the country can only be developed once villages are developed,” BJP president Amit Shah said at the function. For the first time, he said, the people had voted BJP to power in Haryana, hoping a responsive government. “The people were fed up with the governments of two families in the state,” Shah said, adding the BJP government had zero-tolerance approach to corruption.
He promised Haryana villages would be developed on the pattern of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh and asked Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khatrar to send out delegations to the two states to assess the development process there.
Khattar listed out schemes for villages. “The government has made a budgetary allocation of more than Rs 88,000 crore for rural development this year. It is 28 per cent more than last year,” he said.
Khattar further said that under the social audit system, 11-member committees will be formed in villages to monitor, plann and execute development works. “The target is to make every household free from kerosene by providing them with LPG connections,” he said, adding every family in villages would have concrete houses by 2022.
Union Rural Development Minister Birender Singh announced that around Rs 2 lakh crore under the rural development grant and like amount under the MENREGA would be provided to gram panchayats to give momentum to the Gram Uday Se Bharat Uday Abhiyan. A booklet titled ‘Swaran Jayanti Varsh 2016-17’ was released during the programme. It highlighted the achievements of the state government.