New Delhi, August 10: The Ministry of Rural Development hopes to completly connect all villages in the country by the year 2007. The project is to be mainly financed from the annual diesel cess - the budget had announced that of the cess of Rs 5,000 crore, half would be diverted to constructing rural roads. The total project is expected to cost Rs 80,000 crore till 2007. The Union Cabinet is to shortly discuss the proposal called the National Rural Roads Programme. At a Parliament Consultative Committee meeting, Rural Development Minister Sunderlal Patwa said that the programme would be taken up later this year as part of the Pradhan Manthri Gramodaya Yojana. There are 5,88,887 villages in the country of which 46.5 percent are connected and 3,15,029 are not at all connected. The Cabinet, however, has been deliberating on the issue for quite some time now to iron out differences of opinions between various ministers. It is still not too clear as to which villages, and in which state, would be chosen in the first phase. ``We hope to base it on the population of the village, in which case whenever there is more population the roads would be built there first,'' says an official source. Naturally, politicians whose states are less populated are fighting this concept. Another issue which threatens to snowball into a controversy is that of rich states versus poor states. According to the proposal, while the states would be distributed Rs 2,500 crore amongst them, there are some states which are eager to raise the rest of the money and go ahead with the project. Whereas there are others which seek to wait to raise the money needed for starting the project. This has apparently led to a tussle where the states with financial backing informally asking for a go-ahead first.
