Jammu, Feb 19: Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta Saturday made a strong pitch for strengthening democracy at the grassroots level as he urged for the proactive role of gram panchayats in developmental activities and doubling down on the developmental initiatives, taking advantage of the immense resources under various schemes of the central government.
An official spokesman in a statement issued here said that speaking at a meeting held to approve the annual action plans of various schemes of the rural development department for the year 2022-23, Mehta while laying thrust on the progress of rural areas, with particular focus on farmers, women-folk and unemployed youth, said J&K should move towards becoming best performing Union Territory (UT) amongst all the states and UTs in the country as it improves governance through enhanced transparency and efficient service delivery.
The meeting was attended by various senior secretaries including administrative secretary RDD and joint secretary land resources in the Rural Development Ministry in the central government.
Mehta laid emphasis on convergent actions amongst various departments for maximising the impact of MGNREGA and asked the department to work in convergence with the departments like Jal Shakti, Forest, School Education, Industries and Commerce, Agriculture and Horticulture so that the twin aims of resource optimisation and accelerated development were achieved.
He said that there was an abiding need for the department to look to do high-value and high-impact works with tangible outcomes under MGNREGA.
Saying that the generation of economic activity should be the aim of the various initiatives of the department, Mehta said that the department needs to ensure that the target of setting up 15000 Self Help Groups in the current year was met.
He also emphasised conducting an evaluation of the functionality of these groups to ensure that their continued existence on a sustained basis was guaranteed.
Mehta asked the department to ensure that at least 2 lakh MGNREGA works were completed by the end of this fiscal year while further adding that spill over of these works in the succeeding years should be completely avoided.
He asked the department to ensure that all eligible beneficiaries under PMAY (G) were given the pending installments for the construction of houses by March 15 of the current financial year.
Laying emphasis on cleanliness, the chief secretary said that the implementation of on running campaign ‘MeraGaonSwachGaon’ has to be given a further push by implementing village action plans in real earnest.
The Chief Secretary asked the department to complete the pending 82 projects under IWMP by the end of the current fiscal year while directing the department to ensure that assistance available under IWMP 1.0 from the Ministry was fully availed to address the issues of water stress in J&K.
The committee approved the annual action plans of the department for submission to the empowered committee scheduled to meet on February 25 in the Rural Development Ministry for considering these plans.