Central Advisory Committee Meeting on PMAGY held

The first Central Advisory Committee (CAC ) on Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY)) met here today under the Chairpersonship of Shri Mukul Wasnik ,Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment to review the functioning of the PMAGY. The meeting was Co-chaired by Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister Rural Development and was attended by the Chairman National Commission for Scheduled Castes Shri P.L Punia, Shri Badri Ram Jakhar, Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha and the Ministers in-charge of SC Development from the States of Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. Representative of various central Ministries were also present in the meeting.

The Minister, SJ&E while reviewing the implementation of the Scheme urged upon the States to accelerate the pace of implementation in the States and the gap between the socio –economic parameters of SCs and others should be bridged within the stipulated time period . The Minister, Rural Development said that the selected villages must fulfill the ‘Nirmal Gram Puruskar’ under the Total Sanitation Campaign.

The Finance Minister, in his Budget Speech, 2009-10, delivered on 6.7.2009, announced launching of a new Scheme, namely “Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana”, on pilot basis, to cover 1000 villages with more than 50% SC population.

In pursuance of above, Government of India have, in March, 2010, approved a pilot Centrally Sponsored Scheme called, "Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY)" for integrated development of 1,000 SC-majority villages. The Scheme is presently being implemented in five states viz. Assam (100 villages), Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu (225 villages each).

The Scheme intends to achieve these objectives primarily through convergent implementation of existing schemes of Central and State Governments in the selected villages, and by providing Gap-filling funds from PMAGY in which Central Government’s contribution will be at the average rate of Rs. 20.0 lakh per village (revised recently from the earlier Rs. 10 lakh per village), with State Government making a suitable, preferably matching, contribution, for meeting specifically identified developmental requirements of the selected villages which cannot be met under the existing schemes of the Central and State Governments.

The Scheme also has a provision for financial support for strengthening of administrative machinery for its planning and implementation, capability building of key personnel, developing a proper management information system etc.

Full admissible Central assistance of Rs. 101 crore, under the Scheme, was released to the 5 States till last year. The central component for the ‘gap-filling’ has been recently revised upwardly to Rs. 20 per village. The Ministry has already released the additional amount to the PMAGY States, except Assam, to which Rs. 3.00 crore out of Rs. 10.00 crore has already been released.

The CAC, for PMAGY was constituted on 23.8.2011 with the Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment and Minister Rural Development as Chairman and Co-chair of the Committee.