Delhi Development Minister Gopal Rai said on Wednesday that the government has fixed a timeline for the completion of the development work in villages.

Addressing the media, Rai said, “To accelerate the pace of development in urban villages as well as rural areas of Delhi, the Delhi government has fixed a timeline for the completion of the development work. A short window of time is available as the development work in villages already got delayed due to the Lok Sabha election model code of conduct (MCC) and is to be completed by October end before GRAP (Graded Response Action Plan) to control air pollution comes into force in the first week of November.”

“Due to the Lok Sabha election code of conduct, it was not possible to make decisions on new works for the last two months. Therefore, as soon as the code of conduct ended, the Delhi government increased its speed to accelerate the pace of development of Delhi. There are many urbanised villages and rural villages in Delhi. For the development of Delhi’s villages, the Kejriwal government has made a provision of Rs 9,00 crore approx for the first time in its budget for the year 2024 – 2025,” he added.

The minister informed that today he held a meeting and instructed the Rural Development Board and all the agencies associated with it to set their timeline by June 15.

“We have time till October to complete these works. GRAP comes into force in Delhi in November and remains in force till December. After this, the code of conduct for the Assembly elections will come into force in January. We have only time till October to complete the development works in the financial year 2024-25,” he said.

Informing that a meeting of all the MLAs has been called on June 19, Rai said, “In this, the officers of the departments concerned will present the status report of the proposals coming from different assembly constituencies in front of the MLAs. Also, the problems coming to them on the ground will be resolved. During this, all the assemblies will be reviewed.”

“Our target is to complete all the official file work in June,” he added.