Odisha planning to eradicate poverty in 22% gram panchayats

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Friday said it is planning for eradication of poverty from 1342 gram panchayats out of the total 6234 in the state.

Plans would be framed to make 22 per cent of the gram panchayats poverty free in the next two years, said an official.

The proposal for the poverty free gram panchayats was made by the panchayat raj department at the State Level Empowered Committee (SLEC) meeting held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary A P Padhi.

The meeting decided to take up 1342 GPs and develop those as model Poverty Free Gram Panchayat (PFGP) by October 2, 2019.

The programme would be part of the Centre’s Mission Antodaya for building around 50,000 poverty free GPs across the country by October 2, 2019.

Padhi suggested that the department focus on sustainable income, green environment, quality education, health and hygiene of the GPs which would be selected for the programme.

Panchayati Raj secretary Deoranjan Singh said the state government would like to adopt a four-pronged approach like enhancing agricultural productivity, skilling of youth, creating opportunities for high order farm and non-farm activities and better targeting of safety net schemes for combating poverty at the panchayat level.