Model village scheme likely to be unveiled in Budget

New Delhi, Feb 12: Launching of the ‘Prime Minister’s Model Village Scheme' for scheduled castes and Muslims is likely to be announced in the Budget 2007-08. But in the process, while finalising the proposals, it is expected that the Rs 10,000-crore scheme is going to be launched with just token allocation of Rs 10 crore only.

Sources in the government revealed that realising the time constraints, as only two years are left for the UPA government to go in for general elections in 2009, the leadership strategically decided to go with the scheme without pledging adequate fund for it. The Rs 10,000-crore fund to be spent in five years.

‘‘Post-announcement of the scheme, states of the identified villages would be required to prepare detailed project report for each of their villages before seeking funds from the Centre for the purpose,’’ sources said. They also added that since the everyone in government is convinced that the results from the scheme are not expected to come by the time next general elections would be due, the Centre, while keeping the scheme on, wants to make states responsible for implementation. So for any failure, it will the states, which are going to be blamed.

According to the initial proposal the government had identified 1,858 villages in the country with 100% population of schedule caste. The plan required that in the first year of implementation these 1,858 villages could be selected for conversion into 'model villages’. It was also proposed that in the second year another 2,090 villages with 90% SC's population would be brought under the scheme. Similarly in the third year another 29,059 villages with more than 50% SC’s population were identified to be incorporated.

Meanwhile, taking clue from Sachar report, Planning Commission, which finalised the proposal, had got instructions from the PMO to include Muslim dominated villages. "Now 200 additional Muslim dominated villages have been identified by revisiting state wise abstracts of the ‘Classification of villages’.