Fund shortage affects roads project in UP
Villages identified under the Ram Manohar Lohiya Samagra Vikas Yojana, the Samajwadi Party’s flagship scheme, may have to do without the cement concrete (CC) roads for now.
Villages identified under the Ram Manohar Lohiya Samagra Vikas Yojana, the Samajwadi Party’s flagship scheme, may have to do without the cement concrete (CC) roads for now. Despite the fact that the scheme envisages saturation of all the identified villages with CC roads, an acute fund crunch is coming in the way of achieving this task.
The state government had earmarked Rs 2125 crore for construction of these roads in 1598 villages in 2012-13. “But now the government has scaled down the amount to just Rs 391 crore because of lack of funds,” said a senior official in the panchayati raj department, adding, “And even out of the 391 crore, only Rs 100 crore has actually been released for the purpose so far.”
Sources said now instead of saturation of the villages with the CC roads, the government has asked the departments concerned to spend Rs 20 lakh, Rs 30 lakh and Rs 40 lakh per village (depending on the population of a village), on the construction of CC roads. “With this amount, we can build only small patches in the name of CC roads and the objective of laying CC roads in every nook and corner of the identified villages cannot be achieved,” the sources said.
The sources also said the extent of fund crunch could be understood from the fact that villages were yet to be identified for 2013-14, the current financial year.