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CONCEPT – PMGSY (PRADHAN MANTRI GRAM SADAK YOJANA)
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- Objective: Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) was launched on 25th December, 2000 as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme to provide road connectivity in rural areas of the country. The programme envisages connecting all habitations with a population of 500 persons and above in plain areas and 250 persons and above in Hill States, Tribal (Schedule V) areas, the Desert Areas (as identified in Desert Development Programme) and in the 60 Left Wing Extremism affected / Integrated Action Plan districts as identified by the Ministry of Home Affairs/Planning Commission.
- Scope of PMGSY: 1,68,268 habitations were eligible for coverage under the programme, out of which 31,804 habitations had been reported either connected under other schemes or not feasible. Therefore, 1,36,464 habitations were targeted for providing road connectivity under PMGSY. The progrmme also has an `Upgradation’ component with a target to upgrade 3.75 lakh km. of existing rural roads (including 40% renewal of rural roads to be funded by the States) in order to ensure full farm to market connectivity. So the target for Government of India in upgradation per se is 2,24,906 km.
- Bharat Nirman: The Government of India identified `rural raods’ as one the six components of `Bharat Nirman’ with a goal to provide connectivity to all habitations with a population of 1,000 persons and above (500 persons and above in the case of Hill States or Tribal (Schedule V) areas) with an all-weather road. The programme also has an `Upgradation’ component with a target to upgrade 1.94 lakh km of existing rural roads (including 40% renewal of rural roads to be funded by the States) in order to ensure full farm to market connecitivty. Based on ground verification by States, 54,648 habitations are targeted to be connected under Bharat Nirman.
- The Core Network: It is the network of all the Rural Roads that are necessary to provide basic access to all the Habitations. Basic access is defined as single all-weather road connectivity to each Habitation. As already indicated, the effort under the PMGSY is to provide single all-weather road connectivity to each eligible Habitation by way of connecting it to another Habitation having all-weather connectivity or to an all-weather road, in such a way that there is access to, inter alia, Market Centres. A Core Network is extracted out of the total Network mentioned in the DRRP and consists of existing roads as well as the roads required to be constructed to the as yet unconnected Habitations. However, it will not consist of all the existing roads of the DRRP since the objective is to establish ‘basic access’ i.e., one all-weather road connectivity to each habitation.
- Salient features of the PMGSY:
- Planning: The preparation of the District Rural Roads Plan as well as the Core Network helps in the identification of the reads required to connect the unconnected Habitations as well as the network of reads to assure Basic access (single all-weather road connectivity) to all the Habitations. These plans are to be placed before the Panchayati Raj Institutions for approval.
- Project approach: The road works proposed each year are identified and are executed in a time bound manner.
- Technical standards: The roads under the PMGSY are designed and executed as per the standards laid down the Indian Roads Congress.
- Tendering: The roads works are tendered in packages of Rs. 1 to 5 crore, to attract competent contractors with requisite equipment.
- Quality control: A 3-tier Quality Control System has been designed to ensure the quality of the road works. While the concerned Executive Engineer is the first tier, all the states have been requested to enlist the services of a State level independent Agency to verify the quality of the roads. On its part, the National Rural Roads Development Agency, an agency set up by the Ministry of Rural development, engages senior technical personnel as National Quality Monitors to inspect the road works.
- Maintenance: The roads constructed under the PMGSY are to be send maintained by the Panchayati Raj Institutions.
- Status: Of 178,000 (1.7 lakh) habitations with a population of above 500 in the plains and above 250 in the hilly areas planned to be connected by all-weather roads, 55% (97,838) were connected by March 2014, 82% (80% or 131,000 or 1.3 lakh under the PMGSY and 2% or 14,620 under state govt schemes) were connected by December 2017. Of the remaining 47,000, work on all is in progress except for 1700 which will be approved by the end of December 2017 and 100% connectivity will be achieved by March 2019 (16 December 2017 update). Pending work included harsh terrain states of Assam, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand as well as left-wing Naxalite–Maoist extremism infested state of Chhattisgarh, some districts of Jharkhand and Malkangiri district of Odisha. The average speed of road construction under the PMGSY was 98.5 kilometers per day from 2004 to 2014, it rose to 130 km per day in FY 2016-17.
- Summary : Mukhya Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana run by various state governments are the schemes that compliment PMGSY, including in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, MP , Maharashtra, etc.
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