There is no taker of the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna; fund crunch being sighted the reason

New Delhi: Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna, one of the most ambitious projects of the Modi government, has failed to produce desired results as around 78 per cent parliamentarians belonging to both the houses of Parliament irrespective of the party they belong to have not adopted any village. The list included some of the minister in the Modi cabinet as well.

As per the Status of Environment Report 2018, released by one of the minister in the Modi government on World Environment Day, there are over 10 such ministers who have ignored Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna completely they included Nitin Gadkari, Sadanand Gouda, Suresh Prabhu, Anant Gite, Prakash Javadekar, Ravi Shanker Prasad, Anant Kumar, Smriti Irani, Thavarchandra Gehlot, Dharmendra Pradhan and Chaudhary Birendra Singh besides 23 ministers of state.

The scheme is in its third phase that was launched around three years ago. In the first phase of the scheme, out of 776 MPs only 703 adopted one village that had gone down to 466 in the second phase. The report tells that Lok Sabha MPs of 13 states and Rajya Sabha MPs from 15 states did not show any interest in the scheme. The report reveals that out of total 108 MPs from both the houses belonging to Uttar Pradesh 60 did not opt for any village, while the data suggest 88 per cent legislators did not do it in Maharashtra. Around 31 MPs did not show any interest out of 39 MPs in Tamil Nadu. West Bengal has been the worst case where just two MPs have shown any interest in this out of 42 MPs while 40 kept distance from it. Similar is the case in Bihar where MPs neglected this scheme.

The scheme was started on October 11, 2014 under which MPs from the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha were supposed to adopt villages in their respective areas to develop them. On the appeal of Prime Minister UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi too adopted Udva village of Rae Bareilly district and Congress president adopted Deeh village of Amethi. The Prime Minister adopted Jayapur, Nagepur and Kakdiya villages of Varanasi district.

Under this scheme, every MP was supposed to adopt a village till 2016 to develop it and by 2019 two villages each were to be adopted by them and by 2024 eight villages per MP were supposed to be adopted. The PM requested state governments that they must encourage MLAs for this scheme so every constituency is able to develop 5-6 villages. As per the report funding has been the main reason behind MPs turning their back towards it as there was no dedicated fund for this scheme in the budget.