In an innovative and pro-people measure, the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department has drawn up plans to telecast proceedings of village panchayat meetings, through cable television. Initially, it would be introduced in areas coming under 1,000 village panchayats from March next. There are 5,600 village panchayats in the State.
Announcing this at a press conference here on Tuesday, Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj H.K. Patil said that Rs. 10 crore would be immediately released for implementing it. It involves a one-time investment of Rs. 1.5 lakh to Rs. 2 lakh for each cable set. The village panchayats, which have provided toilet facility for more people, would be given priority in the allotment of telecast facility.
Mr. Patil said that bio-metric attendance would be introduced in all village panchayats before March next year and it would be connected to the Panchatantra system. The development of infrastructure would be speeded up by bringing the department under a commissioner.
The Minister said that the Union government had released Rs. 1,203 crore of the State’s share of Rs. 2,113 crore under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Nearly 70,000 works were going on under 15 programmes. A request had been made seeking the release of the balance amount. The State had received Rs. 11,087 crore, in all, under the scheme. Nearly seven lakh man days had been created spending Rs. 20 crore, he said.
He said that work under MGNREGA had dipped to 162.51 lakh man days during 2012-13. During this year up to December, it had reached 228.73 lakh man days accounting for an increase of 40 per cent, he added.
AwardMr. Patil said that the Rural Self Employment Training Institute with which the State government had collaborated in taking up rural development was awarded with first prize given by the Union Rural Development Ministry at the RSETI Stake Holders National Level Convention at New Delhi recently. The A+ award has been bagged by the government for the second year for its cooperation in solving rural unemployment.
He said that the government had encouraged setting up such organisations in all the districts, on the lines of the Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheswara Education Society’s RUDSET.
