Tribal villages to benefit from Ambedkar scheme

The Ambedkar Gram Vikas department has selected 46 villages in 21 blocks of 7 districts and will provide them facilities to convert them into revenue villages. Once these villages are declared as revenue villages, the department will once again verify their statistics and then include them in the list of beneficiary villages.

The districts where the villages have been chosen under the new scheme are Bahraich, Balrampur, Lakhimpur Kheri, Sravasti, Pilibhit, Maharajganj and Siddharth Nagar. While Lakhimpur Kheri has the maximum number of chosen villages, Siddharth Nagar has only one village.

Through a letter dated March 16, the Principal Secretary of the department, Balvinder Kumar, also issued orders to all the concerned departments informing them that these villages have been included in the list of the scheme for the financial year 2011-12 and all developmental work should start off there at the earliest.

The resident claims of the forest tribals and traditional forest-dwellers of these villages are still pending with the state government under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.

After being enlisted for the scheme, these villages will see infrastructure development like construction of CC roads and drains, drinking water supply and power through alternative sources of energy. People

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