New Delhi: Having taken cognisance of the fact that about two third members of the Modi Cabinet have not adopted any village in the second phase of the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY), the government is set to come up with a progress report on the scheme next month.
The scheme, which was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his first Independence Day speech, has now entered its second phase and the last date for selection of the village was January 31.
Replying to a question on poor response to the scheme by Cabinet Ministers, a senior government official told PTI that all MPs and ministers are in the process of adopting a village. "Great job has been done in first phase of the scheme," the official said.
Meanwhile, the government has decided to publish a progress report on the scheme, the official added.
As per the official data, besides Modi, only 8 of the 26 Cabinet Ministers have adopted a village in the second phase.
Under the SAGY, MPS from all political parties need to adopt villages with an aim to transform them into model villages and take the responsibility of developing physical and institutional infrastructure.
All 795 MPs, including 543 from Lok Sabha and 252 from Rajya Sabha, are to develop 3 villages each by 2019.
In the first phase, out of 795 MPs, 701 had adopted villages, while in second phase the response was poor with merely 102 MPs having selected a village.
MPs have complained about lack of separate funding for the scheme.
There is no separate budgetary allocation under SAGY, but MPs have been suggested to channelise money to their chosen villages through the convergence of 21 ongoing developmental schemes like Indira Awaas Yojana for rural housing, Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme.
The objective of the SAGY is to substantially improve the standard of living and quality of life of all sections of the population in the selected villages.
Besides infrastructure development, the scheme aims at inculcating values in the villagers so they become models for others to follow.
