The Centre’s ‘Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana’ (SAGY) — a programme under which MPs are urged to adopt one or more villages for development –seems to have found not many takers in Bihar from 2019-24 with only 14 of out 56 parliamentarians responding to the initiative.
Bihar sends 40 MPs to Lok Sabha and 16 to Rajya Sabha. According to the data compiled by the state rural department, only one of the 14 MPs, who have responded to the scheme in the second phase of the project, is from the Upper House of Parliament, the remaining being from Lok Sabha.
”I have written to all MPs a few times, requesting them to identify a village for adoption under the SAGY (2019-2024) and inform us about it so that development work can be initiated there,” Bihar Rural Development minister Shrawan Kumar told PTI.
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Sunil Kumar (Valmiki Nagar, JD-U), Sanjay Jaiswal (West Champaran, BJP), Radha Mohan Singh (East Champaran, BJP), Rama Devi (Sheohar, BJP) and Kaushlendra Kumar (Nalanda, JD-U) are among those who have found no mention in the list of MPs who have adopted villages under the scheme in the second phase.
Jaiswal, who is the Bihar BJP chief, however, said that he did inform the rural department about a village that he recently picked for development, and was surprised to have found out that it wasn’t mentioned in the government records.
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”It is true that I could not adopt any village in my constituency in the last two-three years due to some communication gap between me and the authorities concerned. Recently, I did adopt one and informed the rural department about it. I don’t know why this has not been mentioned in the data compiled by the state authorities,” Jaiswal told PTI.
Kumar, the JD(U)’s Nalanda MP, affirmed that he would soon do the needful.
The MP also said that he did not receive any letter in this matter from the government.
”I will soon send the name of a village from my constituency to the state government for its development,” he added.
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Parliamentarians who have regularly taken up one village after another in Bihar under the SAGY scheme – floated in 2014 on the occasion of freedom fighter Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan’s birth anniversary – include Ramprit Mandal (Jhanjharpur, JD-U), Ajay Nishad (Muzaffarpur, BJP), Veena Devi (Vaishali, LJSP), Rajiv Pratap Rudy (Saran, BJP), the rural department records revealed.
