JOIN USHer recent bonhomie with the BJP-led government at the Centre notwithstanding, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has not yet allowed MPs of her party to nominate villages to be developed under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project ‘Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana’ (SAGY).
Only one out of the Trinamool Congress MPs nominated a gram panchayat for development under the SAGY, which was launched on October 11 last year. MPs from West Bengal – not only from the Trinamool Congress, but also from the Congress and Left parties – in fact account for half of the country’s 110 parliamentarians, who had not yet selected the villages to be developed under the scheme, Rural Development Minister Birender Singh said on Friday.
Two Rajya Sabha members from Karnataka – Vijay Mallya and B K Hariprasad – also did not nominate villages to be developed under the SAGY. Film personalities Rekha and Javed Akhtar – both nominated members of the Rajya Sabha – and Jaya Bacchan, a Samajwadi Party MP of the upper house, are also among the ones who had not yet identified the villages. Senior Congress MPs like Digvijay Singh and Janardan Dwivedi too did not nominate villages under the SAGY.
Modi had announced the government’s plan to launch such a scheme in his Independence Day speech last year.