Grama Jyothi floundering in Telangana

​Hyderabad: With no funds from the exchequer, the Grama Jyothi scheme of the State has been watered down in villages and planned development of them has been undermined.

While the government has promised to provide crores of rupees for the scheme, so far, it has not even given a rupee. Further, it has been forcing the gram panchayats to spend their own resources on the scheme works.

The Grama Jyothi scheme has been launched in 2014 with much fanfare to develop villages in a planned manner. The scheme was taken up on the lines of the Plan Plus programme of the Centre.

Under the scheme, each gram panchayat has been asked to prepare a plan for the development of the villages for five years and each village has been promised about Rs 10 lakhs to Rs 15 lakhs on the average as grant for the scheme.

According to calculations made at the time of launch, about Rs 860 crore has been estimated for the works of the scheme. The State government promised that it would provide separate funds for the scheme.
As per the rules of the scheme, each village has to form functional committees, about 15, on various issues concerning the villages such as sanitation, construction of roads, water supply, education, agriculture, plantation and others.

Each committee has to hold meetings and identify the works required to achieve the objectives. These plans have to be uploaded on to the government website for public view. However, so far, no funds have been given to any village for the scheme. Except for 14th Finance Commission funds, the villages did not receive any fund from the State government.

Though the State government was supposed to provide funds through State Finance Commission, per capita grant and Re 1 scheme (one rupee is given per each resident of the village as grant), so far, no such amounts were granted. However, the officials have been insisting that works of the scheme should be taken up and instructing the gram panchayat staff to provide funds for scheme works from their pockets.

The officials have been directing the panchayat staff to show the works taken up with other funds as Grama Jyothi works. Sources in the Panchayat Raj department said that in the past four years funds have not been allotted to the villages for the scheme. The government has not earmarked any allocations.

On the other hand, though no funds have been given, the gram panchayats have been asked by the Panchayat Raj department to upload the plans of Grama Jyothi on to the concerned website. They have been told to upload the plans at the earliest.