NEW DELHI: Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice President Rahul Gandhi have adopted one village each in their respective constituencies to develop them into model villages under “Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana” launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month.
Party sources said that while Sonia Gandhi has selected village Udwa from Jagatpur block in her Parliamentary seat Raebareli, Rahul has chosen village ‘Deeh’ in Jagdishpur block in Amethi constituency, an area industrialised during his father late Rajiv Gandhi’s Prime Ministerial tenure.
Udwa in Jagatpur is also the birthplace of Rana Beni Madhav and has a rich historical background.Party sources, however, said that adopting the villages does not mean endorsing the scheme launched by Modi.
Modi had launched Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana on the occasion of birth anniversary of Jai Prakash Narayan last month as was promised in his maiden Independence Day speech.
Launching the scheme, Modi had said that if nearly 800 MPs develop three village each by 2019, around 2,500 villages will be covered in the country and the initiative will change the face of the country by chain reaction.
The Centre had recently extended the deadline by one more week for adopting villages under the plan. The Prime Minister himself has adopted Jayapur village in his Parliamentary constituency Varanasi.
According to Rahul’s local representative Chandrakant Dubey, Akhilesh Singh who died in a plane crash in Uttarakhand while participating in the rescue operation during last year’s deluge, belonged to th village Rahul is adopting.
Dubey said after that tragic incident Rahul had visited the village to pay his last respect to Singh.