Key Details
The People’s Plan Campaign 2026–27 begins with village-level discussions intended to shape the following financial year’s plans.
2 October: Special Gram Sabhas will review scheme benefits and implementation, identify service gaps and discuss local priorities.
Planning outcome: Gram Panchayats will prepare Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDPs) for FY 2027–28.
Evidence and records: The Panchayat Advancement Index can help identify local gaps; plans are uploaded to eGramSwaraj.
Scale: More than 2.55 lakh Gram Panchayats prepare and upload plans on eGramSwaraj. This describes the existing planning system, not plans already completed under the new campaign.
Residents Can Bring Service Gaps Into the Planning Process
The campaign has run since 2018. At this year’s opening Gram Sabhas, residents and local representatives are invited to assess whether schemes are delivering their intended benefits and to identify what their villages need next. Those discussions are meant to inform the GPDPs that Panchayats prepare for 2027–28.
The meetings bring employment and livelihoods, drinking water, sanitation, food security, land records and water conservation into the same local discussion. This matters because a village’s priorities may cut across schemes administered by different departments. The Panchayat Advancement Index provides a way to examine achievements and gaps, while residents’ experiences can reveal problems that aggregate measures miss.
Policy Relevance
The important step comes after the meeting: turning priorities raised by residents into projects that appear in the GPDP and can be supported by available resources. Posting a plan on eGramSwaraj records the decision; it does not, by itself, show that a priority was funded or delivered. Comparing Gram Sabha priorities with final plans and subsequent work would make the campaign’s participatory promise easier to assess.
Relevant Question for Policy Stakeholders: How many priorities identified by residents make it into funded GPDP projects—and what happens to those that do not?
Follow the Full News Here: Special Gram Sabhas to Launch the People’s Plan Campaign 2026–27