The Panchayat Raj and Rural Development (PR&RD) has got Rs. 29271 crore allocations for the fiscal 2020-21 in the annual budget presented in the house today. Commenting on the issue in his budget speech, Finance Minister T. Harish Rao said that the due to the inexcusable neglect by the united Andhra Pradesh government, villages had turned in to dust bowls. “As a result of the weakening of local bodies, the villages were not taken care of. It was a pathetic sight with garbage strewn all around, dilapidated houses, weeds along the paths, abandoned wells, potholes and accumulated plastic waste all over the villages. To transform these villages. CM KCR by making them clean and green and providing all the necessary facilities. The CM also had envisioned an action plan named, “Palle Pragathi” and implemented the same,” he said.
Rao said that With the active participation of the people, Palle Pragathi program had changed the very face of the villages. He said that There was special focus on garbage collection and added that Each village had been provided with a dump yard and a tractor to transport the garbage to the dump yard. “As a result of this new awareness among people, villages have become very clean. The new Panchayat Act has fixed a special responsibility and also allocated special funds to the village sarpanches to improve greenery. Extensive plantations have been taken up in every village and water tankers have been provided in every village to ensure watering and protection,” he said.
Rao also said that In the new Panchayat Act, it was mandatory to allocate 10 per cent of the Budget of the local bodies towards green Budget and added that Responsibility for ensuring this had been entrusted to the District Collectors. He said that the state government had made all the villages open defecation free by taking up comprehensive construction of toilets. Appreciating these efforts, Telangana government was conferred with “Swachcha Sarvekshana Award” by Government of India, he noted.
Speaking further he said there Before the formation of Telangana only 84 Grampanchayats were having tractors and added that 12,668 tractors were made available to Panchayats this year. He said that there was no other state in the country which had provided tractor to each gram panchayat. He also said that the government was releasing funds every month for the development of Panchayats and an amount of Rs.5761 crore had been released to gram panchayats for their development so far. “No other state in the country has released funds to villages in such a manner. I can confidently say that the basic facilities like tractor, trolly, tanker, nursery, palle pragathi vanams, vaikunta dhaamam and dump yard are available in Telangana and they cannot be seen anywhere in the country, he noted.
The Finance Minister has said that the Fifteenth Finance Commission had cut the transfers to the local bodies by Rs.699 crore to the State of Telangana. He said that the state government However, had decided to provide a matching grant to the local bodies with out any cut. “For the first time CM, KCR decided to provide Rs.500 crore every year to Mandal Parishads and Zilla Parishads from the State Budget to ensure that there is no disruption in development activities. Out of this an amount of Rs.252 crore to Zilla Parishads and Rs.248 crore to Mandal Parishads will be released every year. The government will finalize the modalities for the utilization of these funds shortly,” he said.
PR & RD Dept gets Rs.29,271Cr allocations
