To wait as MLAs show little interest
25 out of 90 lawmakers in Haryana are yet to adopt even one of three villages they can for development under state govt’s Vidhayak Adarsh Gram Yojana
ROHTAK: If things had worked as planned, Haryana would have been boasting of 90 adarsh grams (model villages) by now and in the process of developing 90 more by the beginning of the next year. But state legislators do not seem quite keen to adopt the Vidhayak Adarsh Gram Yojana (VAGY), launched by the state government to ensure holistic and sustainable development in villages.
The scheme, which was introduced on the pattern of Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) of the Centre, had envisioned development of 270 gram panchayats (three each by an MLA) by 2019.
To develop these panchayats, the MLAs were asked by rural development minister OP Dhankar to adopt their first village by December 31, 2015 and start working for their development to make it an adarsh gram by March 2017.
However, the latest government data accessed by HT shows that even two months after the March deadline, 25 out of 90 MLAs in the state are yet to even adopt their first village.
Interestingly, three of these MLAs belong to the ruling BJP who have failed to adopt their own party’s flagship scheme in the state. The other 22 are from the opposition Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and the Congress.
Asked about reasons for not adopting any village under the scheme, various MLAs offered a range of excuses.
Rohita Rewri, BJP MLA from Panipat city, said she did not adopt any village because there were no villages in her constituency. However, adopting a village from one’s own constituency was not a criterion set by the government under this scheme. In fact, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, who was among the first few MLAs to avail of the scheme, had adopted a village in Kaithal district even as he represented a constituency in Karnal.
NO FUNDS, SAYS HOODA Former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda (Congress) said he chose not to adopt a village since there were no funds given by the government. However, CM Khattar had announced funds up to Rs 2 crore for the purpose in the budget session of the assembly in March this year.
Documents show that the government has even released Rs 34 crore under VAGY to 42 villages adopted by MLAs for development works. When his attention was drawn to the funds released, Hooda said these were of no use. “Funds for one village cannot lead to development. They should give funds for the entire constituency,” he said.
Most of the Congress MLAs belonging to the Hooda camp have shown no interest in the scheme.
Meanwhile, Dhankar said the idea was not to allot funds for one village, as that could invite objections from other villages in the constituency, but to ensure that MLAs raise awareness in the villages adopted by them and try to bring people together to attain social harmony and gender equality.
However, an RTI query filed by Rohtak-based activist Subhash shows that nodal officers of this scheme in Jind and Karnal — the only two districts which responded to the RTI among the 21 in the state — had no knowledge of MLAs visiting their adopted villages even once till mid-2016.