Centre to give top priority to roads linking model villages

The projects to lay rural roads linking the villages chosen by the parliamentarians for the newly-launched Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) will get priority in the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY).

A meeting chaired by Minister for Rural Development Chaudhary Birender Singh decided to amend the guidelines of the PMGSY scheme to prioritise construction of road networks linking the rural habitations to be chosen by the MPs for development as model villages under the SAGY scheme.

The amended PMGSY guideline put on the respective state governments the onus of maintaining up to a prescribed standard the rural roads constructed or upgraded under the scheme. “The state governments would now have to maintain the roads even beyond the built-in period of first five years as currently provided for under the scheme,” an official of the Ministry of Rural Development said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 11 launched the SAGY scheme, which requires each MP to select a rural habitation in his or her constituency for being developed as a model village by 2019. A meeting of the Cabinet chaired by the prime minister later asked all ministries to suitably amend guidelines for all relevant schemes so that villages chosen by MPs under the SAGY scheme could be prioritised for implementation of the programmes.

According to the amended PMGSY guidelines, the state governments would give priority to all roads leading to the gram panchayats identified under SAGY irrespective of Comprehensive New Connectivity Priority List to include all eligible unconnected habitations in the selected gram panchayats.