1,000 villages to be adopted each year in K'taka

Mysore, Aug 31 (UNI) The Karnataka Government will adopt 1,000 villages every year to ensure its overall development, in keeping with its vision to provide all necessary facilities to the over 27,000 villages in the State, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy announced today.

Addressing newspersons at Chikkakanya, a remote village in the district where he stayed overnight, Mr Kumaraswamy said the Government would spend Rs one crore on each village to develop facilities, including drinking water, roads and sanitation. The programme would be implemented from November one, when the State would be celebrating its 50 years of formation. The adoption of villages would be taken up in a phased manner.

He would hold meetings with the Ministers concerned in Bangalore on September five and six regarding programme implementation, he added.

Mr Kumaraswamy said the rural populace, especially the youth, need to be made financially self-sufficient and the villages developed by way of providing civic amenities. It could not be done overnight and it required immense planning and follow up, which he was doing personally.

Dismissing Opposition criticism about his stay in remote villages as a ''political stunt and gimmick'', he said he had decided to stay in a village so that he could get first hand knowledge about the actual problems being faced by the residents of remote villages. He would continue to do so even after his tenure as Chief Minister.

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