“We held the Vidhan Sabha session early so there will be time in March for me to attend to this. In May, I will hold a vikas yatra in two phases,” said Singh. The Abhiyan will run concurrently with the BJP’s pre-election campaign, Raman Singh said.
With Assembly elections in the state later this year, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh will on Sunday start his last ‘Lok Suraj Abhiyan’, which the government claims is one of the largest “social audit exercises” in the country. First started in 2005, two years after Raman Singh became Chief Minister, the programme, then known as “Gram Suraj Abhiyan”, involves government officials visiting each gram panchayat to collect suggestions and listening to local-level problems. This is followed by a problem-solving exercise, with the Chief Minister and other ministers visiting different parts of the state.
Speaking to journalists on Saturday night, Singh said this year, suggestions had been collected from gram panchayats in the month of January, after which district government officials had been tasked to solve them. “In 2018, we received 30 lakh applications… as opposed to 28 lakh last year,” he said.
Yet, in a state where the BJP has been in power for 15 years, and where it is also seen to be battling anti-incumbency, this edition of the Abhiyan has an unmistakable political edge to it. This is the first edition of the Abhiyan which will be held in a poll year, and Singh admitted that the schedule had been planned such that the mass contact programme could be fitted in. “We held the Vidhan Sabha session early so there will be time in March for me to attend to this. In May, I will hold a vikas yatra in two phases,” said Singh. The Abhiyan will run concurrently with the BJP’s pre-election campaign, he said.
For all the latest India News, download Indian Express App
