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'Achhe din' are here for the President Ram Nath Kovind's village

Yogi govt announces a slew of development measures for Paraunkh in UP

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Rajkishore Singh, Ram Nath Kovind’s ex-classmate, in front of their school, which is now a cow shed
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Hours before Ram Nath Kovind was sworn in as India's 14th President at a grand ceremony held in the national Capital, the Yogi Adityanath government swung into action and announed a bunch of infrastructure and development projects for the President's ancestral village.

A primary health centre, 700 toilets, a well-equipped sports complex for youngsters, four anganwadis to take care of pregnant women and children below six years of age, reboring of 15 dried-up hand-pumps to address the scarcity of drinking water and a tube-well for irrigation are among a slew of projects that the district administration proposed on Monday.

A dozen transformers and 50 electricity poles have also been approved to ensure power supply at every household, with additional emphasis on minimum outage in the village, which has a population of nearly 8,000 people.

Renovation and digitisation of all four government elementary schools in the village with solar-powered computers and projectors was also proposed on Monday, on the direction of the Ministry of Human Resource Development. These schools cater to nearly 400 children and function with minimal facilities as of now.

Moreover, the projects already in the pipeline are being taken up on a 'priority basis', say district officials. This includes widening of the road which connects the village to the tehsil headquarters and interior roads, and improving the drainage system and an overhead water tank.

Anticipating a large number of "high profile" visitors to the village soon, including the President himself, District Magistrate of Kanpur (Rural) Rakesh Kumar Singh visited Paraunkh on Monday, along with his aides.

Singh held a "chaupal" with the villagers to chalk out a development plan for the village, which was suddenly shoved into the limelight last month when Kovind's name was announced as the NDA's presidential candidate.

Deadline has been set for most of the works perhaps because the residents (which include relatives, classmates and childhood friends of the President) now have high hopes of the development.

Singh told DNA, "Reborring of all idle hand-pumps would be completed by 5 August. Public Works Department has been asked to submit the road widening plan by 30th July. Asbestos shade of the vegetable mandi will be repaired within a week. Funds for construction of toilets would be released gradually. This village along with entire state will be made open defecation free by 2 October 2018."

Interestingly, the residents have put forth the demand of a Post Gradate Institute Medical Sciences (lko) like hospital, an engineering and a degree college, a skill training centre for girls, a few industries, a bridge on the nearby Sengur river before the DM.

"This village has a huge developmental backlog. We have suffered a lot. Now, our younger generation needs education and jobs. Degree college, engineering college and industries are must," says Rajkishore Singh, a retired teacher and Kovind's friend.

District Magistrate Rakesh Kumar Singh says, "Such big ticket projects comes under the state government purview, we will send a proposal in this regard for consideration of the government."

Paraunkh a less known village in Kanpur (rural) district, where Shri Kovind born and got primary education under a peepal tree, lacks the most basic facilities even 70 years after the independence despite being barely 180 km from the state capital Lucknow.

When Kovind won the presidential elections last Thursday, the ecstatic residents had demanded President's village must be developed on the lines of Saifai, the native place of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Yadav's home turf in the neighboring Etawah district grew into a city over the past three decades with an airport, 900-bed tertiary care hospital with University of Medical Sciences and Research, state-of-the-art sports complex, professional education institutions, commercial banks and government guest houses with the big push during the Samajwadi Party regimes.

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