Bihar CM’s riders may cost MPs the development fund

Members of Parliament from Bihar may lose development projects under the local area development scheme, as the Centre government has not agreed to some conditions set by chief minister Nitish Kumar.

Updated on: Jun 29, 2011, 01:04:42 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Members of Parliament from Bihar may lose development projects under the local area development scheme, as the Centre government has not agreed to some conditions set by chief minister Nitish Kumar.

Kumar wrote to union statistics and programme implementation minister MS Gill in May, saying the state would not be able to implement the scheme unless the Centre provided the machinery for implementing the scheme, or set aside 6% of the fund as the cost of implementing the scheme.

But Gill said, “The central government cannot set up a public works department or a sanitation wing to implement the scheme… (it) is the responsibility of the state governments.”

Bihar is supposed to get Rs280 crore every year for its 56 MPs once the union cabinet decides to enhance the allotment for each MP from Rs2 crore to Rs5 crore.

A senior ministry official said, “Under the present circumstances, it will be difficult to implement the scheme in Bihar.” The MPs of Kumar’s party Janata Dal (United) are divided on the issue. Mangani Lal Mandal, MP from Jhanjharpur, termed the decision as illegal.

“If we accept Bihar government’s logic, then it should not implement any of the central government schemes,” Lal said Jagdish Sharma, MP from Jehanabad, however, welcomed the move and said the state's decision will provide MPs more time to do their job. “It will make no difference. It creates a lot of undue pressure on us,” he said.

Some party MPs, such as Shivanand Tiwari and Budheo Chowdhury, were hopeful that the state and Union governments would find a way out. “A central agency is being considered for carrying out the works,” Chowdhury said.

Kumar earlier disbanded the scheme for state legislators, rekindling the debate whether elected representatives should perform the functions of the executive. Left parties opposed the scheme on the same ground, saying the job of people's representatives is to deliberate on policy and frame laws.

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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