Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu here on Thursday released a draft manual on ‘Smart village-Smart ward towards smart Andhra Pradesh’ for public discussion.
Addressing a press conference, Mr. Naidu said the State government set 20 non-negotiable indicators for smart villages. The programme will be officially launched on January 18. Till then, the intellectuals, NGOs, elected representatives and people from all walks of life were requested to deliberate on the draft manual and give their feedback and suggestions to the government. It would help in achieving the goal of decentralising governance through the new initiative, he said.
Mr. Naidu said there were 12,918 gram panchayats and 3465 wards spread over 670 mandals across the State. And, to achieve the goal, elected representatives, corporate houses, NRIs, NGOs, civil servants and Group-I officers would act as catalysts in the local development process. Every village would have a lead partner and partners, who work in coordination with Village Committee to achieve all the 20 non-negotiable indicators. In all, 16,500 volunteers would be identified, he said.
The Chief Minister said the community, individually and collectively, would be empowered to take smart decisions to achieve the smart village/ward status. The partners would be encouraged to bring in innovative ideas, technology and resources and disseminate information on best practices to facilitate and accelerate the process, he said, adding, “the government objective was inclusive and sustainable development.
Ministers Devineni Umamaheswara Rao and Kollu Ravindra and MP Konakalla Narayana were present.
