Tamil Nadu will emerge as the no.1 state in the country, says CM Stalin
Chennai: Tamil Nadu would see many developments and emerge as the number one State in the entire country with the help of the people, including those from Pappapatti village, Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Saturday.
Attending the grama sabai meeting at Pappapatti village in Madurai district on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary, Stalin said he wanted the State to have a prosperous future.
He announced a slew of new schemes for the village and its adjoining areas and said that he would be monitoring the progress of the schemes closely.
His government was primarily into developing rural Tamil Nadu and most of its schemes were formulated towards improving the lifestyle of the poor and ordinary village people, he said.
That was the reason the government reached out to the farmers and agriculturists to understand their problems and come up with an exclusive Agriculture Budget for the first time in the State, he said.
Among the schemes he announced for Pappapati were a village panchayat office at a cost of Rs 23.57 lakh under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, a ration shop for Rs 14.59 lakh, a 30,000 litre capacity overhead tank, modern amenities for its burial ground and deep borewells.
For the surrounding areas, some of the schemes announced were a child care centre at Pahadevanpatti village by spending Rs 10.93 lakh, modern facilities in the burial grounds at Mahadevenpatti, Peyampatti and Kariyampatti, a paddy threshing yard for Rs 6 lakh at Kariyampatti, street lights in many places and so on.
Stalin recalled the situation in Pappapatti, Keeripatti, Nattarmangalam villages in Madurai district and Kotakatchenthal in neighbouring Virudhunagar district in the year 2006 when elections could not be held in the panchayats and how the local people helped change everything for the better.
As the Local Administration Minister in the government led by M Karunanidhi, he had, with the help of the then Local Administration Secretary Ashok Vardhan Shetty and Madurai Collector T Udhayachandran, overcome the obstacles and even organized a felicitation meeting of the winners the elections to the panchayats, he said.
He said he was pleased to see so many women attending the grama sabai meeting in the village, which was the sign of growth.
The Chief Minister also recalled how Madurai district had impacted Mahatma Gandhi 100 years ago, forcing him to adopt the simple dhoti as his signature attire. He said it was after speaking to some farmers in a village near Madurai and learning from them that they did not even have a change of clothes that Gandhi took the decision that he stuck to till the end.
