Even before Congress President Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi endorsed one of prime minister Narendra Modi's pet schemes, more than half the Congress MPs had already adopted villages in their constituencies.
Of the 545 Lok Sabha MPs, 344 members have conveyed to the government the name of the village adopted under the Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojna, as per the last updated list available with the ministry of rural development. From among the 241 Rajya Sabha MPs, 86 have adopted villages so far.
That the scheme, under which MPs have been requested to develop one model village in their constituency by 2016 and two more by 2019, has been accepted cutting across the political aisle was apparent from the fact that members of Opposition parties-- including more than 50 per cent of the 44 Congress MPs in Lok Sabha-- have also chosen villages till now.
However, with several of the MPs, including those of the BJP, not meeting the earlier deadline of November 11, the government has given another week's time. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi have adopted villages in their constituencies of Amethi and Rae Bareli in UP though their names were yet to figure on the list. Sources said updating of the list was an ongoing process as MPs were still sending in their proposals to the ministry. Modi, also an MP from Uttar Pradesh, has adopted Jayapur village in his Varanasi constituency. In UP, where the BJP had won 72 of the 80 seats, 61 members, have so far adopted villages, including SP's Dimple Yadav.
Besides Modi's home state, Gujarat, Kerala, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh have already recorded a 100 per cent response to the scheme, followed by Rajasthan, where 24 of the 25 BJP members have selected villages. In Madhya Pradesh, 23 of the 27 MPs, including external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, speaker Sumitra Mahajan and Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia, have adopted villages. Maharashtra also tops the charts with 44 of its 48 Lok Sabha MPs, including union minister Nitin Gadkari who had held the rural development portfolio earlier and NCP's Supriya Sule, sending their proposals to the ministry. In Bihar, where 35 of the 40 Lok Sabha MPs including three of RJD, one of the two JD-U MPs and all six LJP members have adopted villages so far.
Two of the BJP's former allies-- Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and Jayalalithaa's AIADMK–seemed most indifferent to the scheme. Only one of the 34 TMC MPs figured in the list while from Tamil Nadu, of the 38 AIADMK MPs only nine had joined the scheme as per information when the list was last updated. It also showed that no MP had forwarded proposals from urban Delhi and Chandigarh or from the notheastern states of Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram.
In Jharkhand, which is heading for elections, only three–two BJP and one JMM-- of the 14 MPs have sent their proposals. In poll-bound Jammu and Kashmir, two MPs- union minister Jitendra Singh and BJP's Ladakh MP Thupstan Chhewang-- have adopted villages. Of the 25 MPs in Andhra Pradesh, only five members–three of TDP including union minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju-- and two of YSR Congress have so far adopted villages.
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