NEW DELHI: New guidelines for the MLAs' Local Area Development Scheme were approved by the Delhi Cabinet at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Monday.

Following the Cabinet meeting, Ms. Dikshit announced that the earlier guidelines had been revised to make them more workable and enhance the pace of developmental works recommended by the MLAs.

With this, the scheme can now also be converged with the Central Government, State Government and local body plan schemes.

Further, wherever such pooling is done, funds from other schemes and sources would be used first and the MLALAD/MPLAD would be released later so that the MLALAD/MPLAD funds result in completion of the work.

The meeting also decided to permit 15 per cent of the MLALAD funds on maintenance work. Apart from this, the earlier restriction on use of plan schemes has also been dispensed with.

The MLALAD Scheme was started in 1994-95 when the fund under the scheme amounted to Rs.1 crore per MLA per year. The limit was increased to Rs. 2 crore in the year 2004-05.

Ms. Dikshit also declared that the upcoming 1500 MW Green Power Plant at Jhajjar in Haryana would become operational in 2010-2011. She said a joint venture company was being set up by NTPC, which being the majority stakeholder would also be commissioning operation and maintenance of the power plant. Of the power generated by the plant, 50 per cent of the power -- 750 MW, that is -- would be made available to Delhi.

Equity raised

The Cabinet also decided to increase the IPGCL equity holding from 24.5 per cent to 25 per cent in the joint venture company.

Since NTPC would be having a 50 per cent equity holding, the equity of IPGCL and HPGCL has been raised proportionately to 25 per cent each from the existing 24.5 per cent. The financial liabilities on account of the additional 0.5 per cent would be Rs. 35 crore and the earlier investment of approximately Rs.500 crore would now go up to around Rs.535 crore.

The Cabinet also discussed the proposal of Metro connectivity for Delhi airport from Dwarka Sector-9 as an extension of Line-3operational presently from Indraprastha to Dwarka Sub-City. While no decision was arrived at on Monday, it was decided that the proposal would again be taken up at the earliest.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail