Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Panchayati Raj celebrations said, Bharatiya Janata Party ended the injustice done with the villages by previous governments. The previous governments used to avoid villages and feared spending money on them, he added.
National Panchayati Raj Day is observed in India on April 24 every year to mark the constitutional amendment that created the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in India. The day marks the establishment of the first Panchayati Raj system in India on April 24, 1993.
The celebrations for the special day was organised at SAF ground in Rewa, where the Prime Minister Modi performed the ‘Griha Pravesh’ virtually for 4.11 lakh beneficiaries of PM Awas scheme.
Addressing the meeting, PM Modi said, “Earlier governments used to avoid spending money for the village… so they were ignored. Many political parties were running their shops by dividing the people of the village. BJP has also ended this injustice being done to the villages. Our government has opened the coffers for the development of villages.”
“The system which existed hundreds of years, thousands of years ago, the same Panchayati Raj system was not trusted after independence. I always think, those people of Chhindwara whom you trusted for so long, why were they never serious about your development?…. The party that run the govt the most after independence broke the trust of those villages…”,” he said.
On how the development reached villages he said, “In the 10 years before 2014, around 6,000 panchayat buildings were built with the help of the central government. Only about 6,000 panchayat houses were built in the whole country. Within 8 years, our government has got more than 30,000 new panchayat buildings constructed,” he said.
“The previous government had connected optical fibre to less than 70-gram panchayats. It is our government, which has taken optical fibre to more than 2 lakh panchayats in the country,” he added.
“Since 2014, the country has taken up the cause of empowerment of its panchayats and the results are visible today. After 2014, the budget allocated for panchayats, which was earlier less than Rs 70,000 crores, has been increased to Rs 2 lakh crores. Today, panchayats of India are emerging as the lifeblood of the development of villages,” PM Modi said.
“Our government is constantly working to strengthen the Panchayati Raj system in the country. Whichever schemes the government has made to make life easier for rural India, our panchayats are realizing them on the ground with full dedication,” he added.
“This is possible only when the basic facilities reach 100 per cent beneficiaries expeditiously, without any discrimination. We opened bank accounts of more than 40 crore people of the village by running the Jan Dhan Yojana. We increased the reach of banks to villages through India Post Payments Bank,” he added.
He also launched e-Gram Swaraj-GeM Integrated Portal and added how digital growth will revolutionise the development of villages.
“The e-Gram Swaraj-GeM Integrated Portal has been launched today. This will make the process of procurement done through Panchayats simple and transparent,” he added.
PM Modi also inaugurated and lay the foundation stone of various railway projects worth around Rs 2300 crore. The projects include 100 per cent rail electrification in Madhya Pradesh, along with various doubling, gauge conversion and electrification projects.
This year’s Panchayati Raj Day theme was ‘Sustainable Panchayat: Building Healthy, Water Sufficient, Clean & Green Villages.’ The theme focuses on promoting sustainable development in rural areas by ensuring the availability of clean water, promoting good health practices, and creating a clean and green environment.
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