A separate fund for this project will be created by setting aside 50 paise on every rupee collected on account of cess on diesel.

This project is likely to be officially launched by the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee on Gandhi Jayanti.

The Prime Minister in his Independence Day address, stressed the need to connect all villages in the country with a population of 1,000 people and above by fair weather roads within three years. He also proposed that all villages having population of 500 to below 1000 people should be connected by fair weather roads by 2007.

Consequent to the prime minister's announcement, the rural development ministry has worked out the details of the project including its required investment. It has proposed that under Pradhan Mantri Gramodaya Yojana (PMGY) construction of some 10 lakh km of fair weather roads will be taken up in the current year. The project on the whole is estimated to benefit 30 crore people living in rural areas.

The ministry has noted that about 53.48 per cent of villages in the country are lacking connectivity, out of this 38.19 per cent villages in the northeastern region are lacking connectivity. Most critical situation is in Arunachal Pradesh were 79.15 per cent villages are lacking connectivity, followed by Madhya Pradesh were 72.48 per cent villages are unconnected, Bihar were 66.12 villages are unconnected, Rajasthan were 65.66 per cent villages are unconnected, Orissa were 64.33 villages are unconnected, Uttar Predesh were 56.23 per cent villages are unconnected, Himachal Pradesh were 55.39 villages are unconnected, West Bengal were 54.02 per cent villages are unconnected, Manipur were 53.12 per cent villages are unconnected and Mahagalaya, Karnataka and Maharashtra were over 552 per cent villages are unconnected.

The ministry is of the view that the national highway quadrangle proposed by the prime minister well help considerably to achieve rural connectivity of this vast areas.

With a view to speed up the process of rural connectivity, the ministry is planning to involve all the wage-employment schemes and `food-for-work scheme' in the process.