MPs: Money for Bundelkhand being misused

Top Planning Commission functionaries had a tough time dealing with onslaught of the Members of Parliament from Bundelkhand. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 18, 2011, 01:32:37 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Top Planning Commission functionaries had a tough time dealing with onslaught of the Members of Parliament from Bundelkhand. The MPs have been levelling allegations of inefficiency in implementing the special central government package of Rs 7,266 crore for 13 districts in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Till now R2,537 crore has been released to the state with utilisation being as low as 9% in UP and over 30 % in MP.

Despite the package, over 500 farmers reportedly committed suicide bewteen June 2010 to May 2011 in Bundelkhand, as compared to about 500 farmer suicides in entire 2010. “The frost had devastated the crop this year,” said Mihir Shah, a plan panel member.

The MPs from the region were furious about the package implementation and accused the commission, which is implementing the package, for failing to ensure that people were benefited. Samajwadi party MP RK Singh Patel told the plan panel that they could not visit their constituency because of government machinery breakdown.

Another MP Shivraj Singh Lodhi accused the state government functionaries of taking money to implement different projects under the package comprising of special funds for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Scheme, Rashtriya Kisan Vikas Yojana and Additional Central Assistance.

“Over Rs 5 lakh allocated under MGNREGA to pay wages was used to pay telephone bills in one of the districts,” Jain alleged.

Admitting that there was problem of leakages in implementation, Shah said the government was considering the MPs demand of allocating R250 crore as special relief compensation for damage caused to crops due to frost and already R200 crore to provide drinking water facilities in the region has been approved by the Centre.

It was also decided that the next meeting of Bundelkhand advisory committee will be held in Orcha in Madhya Pradesh and CMs of UP and MP will be invited to present their side.

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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