Prime Minister told all ministries to report on the initiatives taken by them for 115 backward districts and also to come up with an action plan for these districts.
This is part of the concerted effort by the government to focus attention on these districts.
In November last year, the NitiAyog had appointed additional secretary and joint secretary rank officials as prabhari or in-charge to coordinate between the efforts of the Centre and the concerned states.
Criteria for selection
Among the 115 districts, 35 are affected by Left Wing violence.
The districts were identified on the basis of indicators of education, health, nutrition, basic infrastructure, rural household electrification, and access to potable water and individual toilets.
Jharkhand tops the list, with 19 backward districts, followed by Bihar with 13 districts; Chhattisgarh is at the third spot with 10 districts.
NitiAyog is developing a real-time monitoring mechanism of key performance indicators and will rank the districts on a continuous basis.
While selecting the districts, maximum weightage was given to data of landless households dependent on manual labour.
The other criteria were nutritional level of children below five years and their drop-out rate from schools.