Bihar government has set a target to make the state open defecation-free by October 2, 2019, Rural Development Minister Shravan Kumar announced in the Assembly today.
"Under state sponsored Lohia Swachhta scheme, the rural development department has started the work of construction of individual toilets since June 1, 2016. The government has set a target to make the state open-defecation free by October 2, 2019," Kumar said.
He was replying to the debate on his department's budgetary allocation of Rs 15471.04 crore for 2018-19 which was subsequently passed amid walk out by the opposition members at the fag end of the day's proceedings.
Under Lohia Swachhta scheme, the state government provides Rs 12,000 as an incentive directly into the bank accounts of beneficiaries for construction and use of individual toilets, the minister said.
The toilet coverage in the state has gone up to 40.83 per cent from 22.81 per cent on October 2, 2014, he said.
On construction of house under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Rural), Kumar said 65.68 lakh families were found in the survey based on socio economic and caste census (SECC 2011) but only 36.76 lakh people were found eligible to get benefits under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Rural).
Kumar said he has asked all district magistrates to include those who have been left out of the SECC survey for availing the scheme after getting it ratified by gram panchayats.
Earlier, Rural works minister Shailesh Kumar announced that the government has set the target of providing road connectivity to all the "tolas/hamlets" by the end of 2020.
Stating that only 773 km of roads were constructed during 2000-2005 when the RJD was in power, the minister said, "We have constructed 15685 kms of roads between 2005-2010 while the figure significantly went up to 32182 km between 2010-2015. In the past two years and five months of the current government, we have constructed 30285 km of roads."
Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav took exception to Shailesh Kumar's claim that a minister during RJD regime had said he could not construct 15 km of roads in 15 years of RJD regime.
Yadav urged Speaker Vijay Kumar Choudhary to expunge the statement from the proceedings if the rural works minister's statement was proved wrong.
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