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THE CENTRE on Friday announced 100 Aspirational Agriculture Districts to be developed under the Prime Minister Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana (PMDDKY) across 29 states and UTs, with Uttar Pradesh accounting for the most 12 districts.
The government also released the operational guidelines of the scheme and appointed 100 Central Nodal Officers (CNOs) — most of them joint secretaries — for monitoring the scheme’s performance across the selected districts. The order was issued by the Department of Personnel and Training on Friday.
On the districts’ list, UP is followed by Maharashtra with nine districts, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan account for eight each, while seven districts have been selected from poll-bound Bihar. Six states — Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, West Bengal — account for four districts each. Three districts each have been selected from Assam, Chhattisgarh and Kerala. The UT of J&K, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand have two districts each. The remaining 11 states — Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Sikkim and Tripura — account for a district each.
According to operational guidelines of the scheme, identification of 100 aspirational agricultural districts has been based on three factors: (i) low productivity (ii) moderate crop intensity (iii) below-average access to credit. “The number of districts for each state is based on the net cropped area and number of operational holdings, ensuring balanced regional development and fostering agricultural growth.”
Designed on the lines of Aspirational Districts Programme, PMDDKY aims at developing agricultural districts. It has 5 objectives— enhancing agricultural productivity, adopting crop diversification and sustainable agriculture practices, augmenting post-harvest storage at the panchayat & block level, improving irrigation facilities & facilitating long-term & short-term credit.
While the PMDDKY does not have a separate budgetary allocation, it will be implemented through convergence of various schemes. As per the guidelines, a district agriculture development plan will be prepared for each district and 36 schemes of 11 departments will be converged into these plans. Of these 36 schemes, a maximum 19 will be from the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. It is estimated that work worth `24,000 crore will be undertaken under the scheme every year.
The UP districts selected under the scheme are Mahoba, Sonbhadra, Hamirpur, Banda, Jalaun, Jhansi, Unnao, Prayagraj, Chitrakoot, Pratapgarh, Shravasti and Lalitpur. Maharashtra’s nine districts are Palghar, Yavatmal, Gadchiroli, Dhule, Raigad, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Chandrapur, Nanded and Beed. In Bihar, Madhubani, Darbhanga, Banka, Gaya, Siwan, Kishanganj and Nawada have been selected.
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