Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba will hold a meeting with DCs of 19 districts alongwith senior officials of the departments of the Government on the issue of transforming aspiring districts in Ranchi on March 22. He will leave for Delhi on March 23.
Niti Ayog has set 48 indicators for development, in which 115 districts in the country lag behind miserably and struggle to catch up with the 48 indicators.
State’s 19 districts are lagging behind Niti Ayog’s 48 indicators out of which 16 are the Left Wing Extremist hit districts where the development lag is more severe. Palamu, Garhwa Latehar Lohardagga, Khunti, Gumla Simdega etc are backward districts in the sense that they have failed to meet the indicators.
“The Union Home Secretary will hold meeting with the officials in Ranchi where we will be presenting our plans to pull out the districts of its backwardness,” DC Palamu Ameet Kumar said.
“To call a district backward district sounds most painful & awkward and hence such a district is labelled as aspiring district to be more euphemistic which means the district despite its shortfalls and deficiencies have the merit, guts, aspirations and potentialities to come at par with other advanced and developed districts of the country,” he added.
Palamu administration has drawn a four year district action plan for this which starts from 2018 to 2022 the year for a New India.
However some senior officials of the State Government told “Frequent change of DCs in aspiring districts (read backward districts) will not be proper as the new man will take his own time to understand the priority and may not have the same passion to reach the goal which the previous one had who readied the district action plan of 4 years but this should not mean that a DC be fixed like a pole in such a district for 4 years!”
A mechanism be developed so that passion, speed and fixity of purpose in bailing out backward districts from its backwardness is not hampered said the officials.
The Niti Ayog has divided its 48 indicators in 6 segments like health & nutrition, women & child care, agriculture & allied practices, financial inclusion, skill development and infrastructural facilities.
Sources said as Left Wing Extremism is on the wane in Palamu , Garhwa ( where over the last three years, there has been no major extremist violence except for Burha Pahar that passes through this district’s Bhandarya , Badgad, Madgiri, Sanya Chemo etc has witnessed convulsions on account of anti naxal ops), Lohardagga etc the Niti Ayog may like to reframe the shortlisting of its districts with LWE tagging!