Five months after it was launched, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-touted scheme, the Saansad Gram Adarsh Yojana, under which MPs have to adopt a village for development, is meeting resistance from the Opposition.
On Tuesday, Opposition parties in the Rajya Sabha extended their support to Samajwadi Party member Naresh Agarwal’s demand to scrap the scheme as there are no clear guidelines on how to develop model villages and no clarity on the source of funding.
Speaking during Zero Hour, Mr. Agarwal said there were no guidelines or financial plans for the MPs to follow. He said the scheme was announced without much thought and MPs have been left to fend questions from villagers.
“When we visit our constituencies, we are often told to go seek votes from the villages that we have had to adopt. This scheme has made it difficult for us to visit our constituencies,” Mr. Agarwal said, adding: “I’ve had to adopt a village too, but I don’t want to and am opting out of this scheme.” Members from the CPI(M), the CPI, the Trinamool Congress, the SP, the BSP and the JD(U) supported Mr. Agarwal.
The MP said just as the government’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has remained limited to photo-ops and Ministers wielding the broom, the model village scheme too has failed to take off.
The scheme was launched on October 11, coinciding with the birth anniversary of Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan, with the Prime Minister urging MPs from both Houses of Parliament to identify and develop one village as a model one by 2016, and two more by 2019, covering over 2,500 villages of the 6 lakh villages country-wide.
