The Mandya Zilla Panchayat, at its general meeting here on Tuesday, adopted a Rs. 703.84 crore budget for 2015-16.
Zilla panchayat president Lalitha presented the budget proposals, which include allocations for the zilla panchayat, seven taluk panchayats and 232 gram panchayats in the district
The meeting approved a plan expenditure of Rs. 244.11 crore and non-plan expenditure of Rs. 459.72 crore.
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The zilla panchayat has set aside Rs. 41.63 crore for primary and secondary education, including Rs. 25 lakh for repairing school buildings and Rs. 20 lakh to purchase furniture to the school development committees; Rs. 24.34 crore for medical and public health services and rural health sector, including Rs. 35 lakh to renovate buildings of the Health Department and Rs. 7 lakh to purchase equipment for health centres.
The panchayat has also allocated Rs. 13.89 crore for ZP programmes for backward classes, Rs. 15 lakh for providing drip irrigation kits, Rs. 2 lakh to conduct agriculture training programme, Rs. 25 lakh for farmers to buy subsidised agricultural equipment, and Rs. 33 lakh for sericulture department.
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Drinking water
An amount of Rs. 124 crore has been earmarked for supplying drinking water to village residents.
An allocation of Rs. 5.5 crore has been made for constructing/repairing link roads and bridges and Rs. 124.71 crore for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme.
Houses, toilets
The zilla panchayat will make Mandya district open defecation-free by constructing 40,000 individual toilets during the current fiscal.
It will construct 2,696 houses under the Indra Awas Yojana during 2015-16, Ms. Lalitha said.
16,800 bicycles
Ms. Lalitha said that the panchayat would provide bicycles to 16,800 students of class VIII during the current fiscal year.
Chief Executive Officer of zilla panchayat Rohini Sindhuri, vice-president Chandrakala Nanjundachar, and standing committee presidents K.S. Vijayanand, Ravi and Zakriya Khan were present.