85% rural areas connected under PMGSY

About 85 per cent of the 178,184 eligible rural habitations have been connected by all-weather roads under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), with a little help from states, and the government plans to connect the rest by March 2019, according to senior officials. In 2014, only 57 per cent of the eligible habitations had road connectivity, though the PMGSY was launched in 2000, when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government was in power. In subsequent years, however, a pick-up in road construction to almost 140 km a day helped push the target, the officials said.

Around 14,620 habitations (eight per cent of those eligible) have been connected by roads under various state schemes like Chief Minister’s Rural Roads Programme, which too have been subsumed in the overall target. Most of these roads have been constructed in the past three years. “By March 2019, we plan to connect 97-100 per cent of the all eligible habitations,” an official said.

The PMGSY has been one of the most-focused programmes of the government to boost the rural economy. Around 480,000 km of rural roads had been constructed till 2016, since the launch of the programme.

In three years, starting from 2017-18, the central government along with states plans to spend ~100,000 crore under the PMGSY. This includes expenditure on building new roads, upgrading and maintenance of already-constructed roads, and building roads in hitherto unconnected Maoist-affected districts.