• PAGE ONE
• INDEX
• HOME

Norms likely for rural roads fund allocation

Our Bureau

NEW DELHI, July 10

FOLLOWING complaints of favouritism in the allocation of funds under the `Pradhan Mantri Gramodaya Yojana' to Northern States for construction of rural roads, the Government, on Monday, arrived at a consensus decision to evolve transparent guidelines in this regard.

This was arrived at after an hour-long meeting here with the Union Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Sinha, and the Minister of Rural Development, Mr. Sunderlal Patwa, by the Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Mr. K.C. Pant.

It might be noted that in this year's Budget, the Government announced the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Gramodaya Yojana with the objective of undertaking time-bound programmes to fulfill the critical needs of the rural people through merging various dev elopmental schemes. Mr. Sinha provided a sum of Rs. 5,000 crores, out of which Rs. 2,500 crores would be earmarked for initiating a nationwide programme of constructing rural roads and improving connectivity to ensure balanced regional development.

Even, as the Finance Minister pointed out, that under the scheme, Central assistance would be provided to States for implementing specific projects in these sectors, sources told Business Line that Mr. Patwa made a presentation to the Prime Minister Mr. A.B. Vajpayee, suggesting the setting up of a rural roads corporation to funnel the funds through his administrative ministry to various States.

But both the Finance Minister and the Deputy Chairman had disfavoured any such new setup for allocating funds for rural roads since this would give discretionary control to the Ministry of Rural Development in preempting funds for the States it wants to favour with.

It is against this backdrop and in the wake of general grouse from Southern States that they had not obtained outlays commensurate with their vast unmet needs for rural roads construction, that Mr. Pant convened a tripartite meeting on this subject. Late r, officials of the concerned Ministries sat together and agreed to put in place transparent guidelines for allocation of funds under the rural roads development programme.