MPs to have more flexibility in using funds

The Members of Parliament will be able to spend more money from their local area development fund for betterment of the deprived, for buying ambulance for villages and help NGOs and trusts in building assets for public good.

Updated on: Dec 1, 2010, 01:09:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Members of Parliament will be able to spend more money from their local area development fund for betterment of the deprived, for buying ambulance for villages and help NGOs and trusts in building assets for public good.

In the sweeping changes finalised in MP's Local Area Development (MPLAD) scheme, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has also recommended possible convergence of Centre's flagship programmes such as Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) with the scheme.

"The state governments have approved the suggested changes," Programme implementation minister Sriprakash Jaiswal told HT.

"We will seek views of the MPs before notifying the changes aimed at plugging the loopholes and improving utilisation of funds".

The changes provide flexibility to MPs in utilisation of the funds, which the government has refused to increase from Rs 2 crore per annum to Rs5 crore.

"There will be some relief to MPs who have been seeking a hike (in the fund)," an official, who was not willing to be quoted, said.

The revised guidelines will allow MPs to spend money in proportion of the scheduled caste or tribe population in their constituency with a ceiling of R50 lakh per annum. As of now, MPs can spend 15 % of their fund in SC and 7.5 % in ST habitats, irrespective of their numbers in the constituency.

The new guidelines also seek to stipulate minimum fund for SC or ST population, where they are less than 5% of the total population, to ensure that the deprived are not ignored for political considerations.

The ministry has proposed to double the amount from existing R25 lakh but had imposed additional conditions to prevent its misuse.

"The money can be given to only those bodies who are the original owners of the land where the asset is to be created and it has to be provided for community service," a ministry official said.

In case of movable assets, the MPs will be able to sanction funds to buy and operate ambulances or hearse vans, which can be run by NGOs.

For transparency in the scheme implementation, every work sanctioned, will have to be displayed at district administration office.

In addition, third party inspection by bodies appointed by the state or the Centre will be a mandatory requirement before release of the final payment to the contractor.

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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