GUNTUR: The difficulties of an NRI to serve his native village was resolved by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in Guntur district.
According to reports, M. Venkateswara Rao belo-nging to Cherukupalem village in Achampeta mandal is a Telugu NRI residing in California, USA. Inspired by Mr Naidu’s call to NRIs to adopt their native villages under the Smart Village, Smart Ward programme, Mr Venkateswara Rao decided to adopt his native village Cherukumpalem. Desperately wanting to give back to his village, he came home on a vacation and launched the Cherukupalem Village Development Forum and started several development programmes including construction of roads.
But the thing went wrong as village sarpanch Arogyamma, with the help of village secretary M. Shafi prepared fake bills claiming the works of NRI were done by the village panchayat and drew the amount. Some people informed about the fake bills to Venkateswara Rao’s father M. Bhadraiah and he was shocked when he got the information of drawing money by Arogyamma for the charity works done by his son Venkateswara Rao. Further the village panchayat staff threatened the NRI family not to disclose about the scam.
Vexed over the non-cooperation of panchayat staff and drawing of money with fake bills, Mr Venkateswara Rao took the issue to the notice of the CM with the help of TD leaders. Mr Naidu expressed anger over the smart scam and ordered Guntur district officials to initiate stern action against the sarpanch and village secretary and to recover the amount.
Mr Venkateswara Rao said that some corrupt people were killing the spirit of serving the homeland. He said that he was happy that the government responded swiftly and sought strict supervision of service/charity works under Smart villages/wards programme to avoid smart scams.
