New Delhi, June 14: Manmohan Singh will spend three days in Vidarbha, the Maharashtra district where farmer suicides in recent months have outstripped those in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, starting June 30.

Sources close to the Prime Minister said he will be based in Nagpur, the region’s headquarters, and travel into the villages every day to oversee implementation of the national rural employment guarantee act, the Bharat Nirman scheme and the rural healthcare mission.

Singh is expected to meet district officials and visit hospitals, schools and power stations to see for himself the quality and reach of education, healthcare and power supply.

The idea of such a visit, the first by a Prime Minister in a long time, was Singh’s own and he is expected to follow it up with similar forays in Bihar and Orissa.

Congress sources welcomed the decision, saying it would set “right” the perceived “flaws” in the Prime Minister’s image ? “created by the Left’s covert campaign” ? as a proponent of free market and economic reforms and bring him and the government closer to the “aam admi”.

Between June 2005 and May 2006, 540 farmer suicides were reported in Vidarbha.

Congress sources said while job-seekers in other states may have been cold to the employment guarantee scheme, there was a huge demand for it in this region not only among landless labourers but also farmers owning six acres or less.

They had to pay off their debts, including loans taken for treatment in private hospitals, and buy seeds and other inputs for the next crop.

The party is keen to give a fillip to the job scheme which, along with the healthcare mission and Bharat Nirman, has been showcased as the UPA government’s special programme for the common man.

The Congress’s feedback is that the employment guarantee scheme has not evoked the expected response.

There is also a demand from the party that it should be named after Mahatma Gandhi or Indira Gandhi to prevent non-Congress state governments from walking away with the credit.

At a recent party meeting to review the act, there was a suggestion that district and block-level committees of its members be set up in Opposition-ruled states to monitor the working of the scheme.

But sources said Maharashtra may not be the best barometer to judge its efficacy because the state has had a similar scheme for years with mixed results.