The Hindu : `Govt. not utilising Central grant for slums dwellers'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 29, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

`Govt. not utilising Central grant for slums dwellers'

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, JAN. 28. The Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party president, Harsh Vardhan, today said the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi's visit to the slum camps at Narela and Holambi Kalan here a couple of days ago - when she accused the Centre of not doing enough for the dwellers -- was just an attempt to befool the people as the Union Government has given Rs 115 crores to the Congress-ruled Delhi Government for upliftment of the slum people but the money has still not been utilised properly.

Contending that if the Congress was really serious about development of Delhi and feels concerned about the poor it should give priority to the upliftment of slums, Dr. Vardhan said contrary to adopting such an approach the party has only used slum dwellers as a vote bank and only indulged in establishing new slums.

Even with the sum of Rs 115 crores, which had been allocated by the Centre for rehabilitation of about 18,000 families and developmental activities to be undertaken by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, it said the Delhi Government has done little - utilising only an amount of Rs 25 crores. Further, he charged that while a large portion of this allocation has gone for mere payment of salaries of the employees, there were no available details of the remaining amount.

As such the BJP leader demanded that instead of indulging in petty politics the Delhi Government should make public its slum development and rehabilitation plans, budget allocations and the expenditure so far incurred.

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