Tamil Nadu panchayat tops ranking; Gujarat has most top 10 entries

NEW DELHI: Tamil Nadu’s Molugamboondi has topped the 2019 rankings of gram panchayats in the country, scoring high on implementation of development and infrastructure programmes under the Mission Antyodaya scheme.

The second rank has gone to Bambhaniya GP of Bhavnagar in Gujarat while four more Gujarat panchayats are tied for third ranking. One in Maharashtra, two each of Punjab and Tamil Nadu, and five Gujarat panchayats are tied at fourth ranking.

It marks a major change from the 2018 ranking table when 49 out of 50 gram panchayats in the top six rankings were from Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, with one from Patan in Gujarat being the sole exception.

The national rankings under Mission Antyodaya are done to gauge the implementation of schemes across fields ranging from agriculture, roads, health parameters to poverty alleviation, rural housing, electrification, drinking water, PDS, education and poverty alleviation. While in 2017 and 2018, the villages were ranked on the basis of 46 parameters, the scale has been widened to 112 parameters for 2019.

Without any plan or budget of its own, Mission Antyodaya under Union rural development ministry is conceived as a convergence platform to bring about consolidated implementation of existing schemes to improve physical and social parameters in a panchayat. The progress made is measured at the end of the year through a survey which ranks them on a scale of 100.

According to a senior official, the 2019 rankings are provisional as the process of assessing the panchayats is still on. A total of 2.4 lakh panchayats are to be ranked, with around 2.1 lakh completed.

The top panchayat from Chhattisgarh is Mura in Raigarh while that from Andhra Pradesh is Inamadugu in SPSR Nellore, and from Karnataka it is Nandagad in Belagavi — all tied at fifth slot. Kerala figures first at the sixth slot with Athirampuzha panchayat in Kottayam district.

Meghalaya’s Jangnapara falling in South West Garo Hills figures at 7th slot, which it shares with 36 other panchayats.

As many as 269 panchayats from just 15 states are ranked in the top 10 places. Gujarat has the maximum entries with 99, followed by Punjab with 66, Kerala with 69 and Tamil Nadu with 21.

In contrast, large states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telangana have just one panchayat each in top 10 places, while Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have two panchayats each.