Govt makes it easier for MPs to use funds

Ahead of the 2014 general elections, the UPA government has eased norms for MPs for faster utilisation of their local area development fund (MPLAD) of Rs. 5 crore per annum.

Updated on: May 16, 2013, 01:37:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Ahead of the 2014 general elections, the UPA government has eased norms for MPs for faster utilisation of their local area development fund (MPLAD) of Rs. 5 crore per annum. The changes, however, raises concern over possible misuse of funds.

Among the slew of changes, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation has removed tendering as a mandatory clause for selecting the project implementing agency. Instead, the ministry had allowed the district administration to select the agency on the basis of state government rules.

The new flexibility allows the district authorities to spend the money provided by MPLADs through NGOs. The criteria for selection of the NGO have also been left vague. “The NGO should preferably be of national repute and should be selected by a committee under district authority,” the new rules say.

But, many MPs have raised objections saying NGOs will have no accountability and chances of misuse of funds would be much higher. "The ministry should prescribe the parameters for identifying the NGOs rather than leaving it to the district administration," said an MP.

Another grey area in the rules is making panchayati raj bodies, which do not have adequate infrastructure, the nodal agency for execution of works in rural areas.

Government officials say it could result in nepotism as works would be allocated to only those village bodies who find favour with an MP concerned.

For the first time, the ministry has also allowed MPs to allocate money to private aided educational institutions, provided they don’t charge commercial fee. The conditions to allocate funds to them are that they should be recognised by government agencies and are receiving financial assistance from state government.

“I am glad to inform you that on considering the suggestions, modifications have been recently made in certain critical areas to enable more effective implementation of the scheme,” programme implementation minister Srikant Jena said, in a recent letter to all MPs.

The ministry had also enhanced the amount of money a MP can give to a trust or a society in a year from Rs. 50 lakh to Rs. 1 crore.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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