In a move to apparently woo All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, Congress leader and Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has offered an additional grant of over Rs 93 crore to her government, under the National Rural Drinking Water Programme. In a letter written to the CM, Ramesh mentions that the state government had utilised 60 per cent of the over Rs 273 crore allocated under the NRDWP.
Pawar said the Union Cabinet has already decided last week to reschedule crop loans of farmers in the affected drought areas with reduced interest rate of 7 per cent.
Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has sent a missive to the Comptroller and Auditor General, expressing concern over delayed audit reports adversely affecting the flagship National Rural Drinking Water Programme. In a personal letter to CAG Vinod Rai, he has drawn attention to the ministry not being able to release funds to the states as they are not submitting audits of accounts of grants-in-aid along with the utilisation certificates.
There is one area in which West Bengal has come out on top: Utilisation of funds under the National Rural Drinking Water Programme, or NRDWP.
The special package assistance would be used to augment irrigation structures in drought-prone areas to address the agrarian distress and drinking water crisis.
The focus is likely to be on consolidation and improvement of existing rural-centric programmes to ensure their completion ahead of the next general elections in 2019, rather than announcement of new schemes. Sanjeeb Mukherjee and Arup Roychoudhury report.
Water from as many as 78,508 rural habitations is contaminated by arsenic, fluoride, iron or nitrate, finds out Chaitanya Mallapur/IndiaSpend.com.
Jaitley's Budget has the potential to change the face of Modi's Bharat
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