Kerala - Kannur   

Sangathan: Plan of local bodies scuttled

KANNUR: The Kerala Pradesh Panchayat Raj Sangathan (KPPRS) has alleged that the State government is scuttling the annual Plan of local bodies for 2007-08.

The KPPRS, the State unit of the All India Panchayat Raj Sangathan constituted by the All India Congress Committee, in a statement issued here on Sunday said that the annual Plan was being undermined by the government by creating a situation in which even 25 per cent of total Plan outlay of Rs.1,540 crore for panchayats and municipal corporations in the 11th Five Year Plan could not be utilised.

KPPRS president Jose Kattukkaran and general secretaries P.P. Krishnan and N.S. Varghese accused Ministers in the State Cabinet of disrupting developmental activities in the panchayat/nagarapalika system as they were entangled either in corruption charges or factional feuds in the Communist Party of India (Marxist)(CPI(M). They also said that the government was delaying sanctioning of approval for projects that should have been submitted by the District Planning Committees (DPC) on August 14 as it was keeping the DPCs out of Plan preparation and scrutiny and imposing on the local bodies 39 complicated and irrelevant project forms and nearly 50 scrutiny schedules under the supremacy of the Information Kerala Mission and the Kerala Institute of Local Administration.

KPPRS leaders said that the CPI(M), which had been saying that the 13 forms used till last year were big in number and size, were maintaining silence now. Even if the projects had secured sanction in November, additional two months would be required for selecting beneficiaries, convening grama sabha meetings and tender proceedings, they said adding there would be hardly three months left for the local bodies to implement the projects. Majority of the projects were likely to be earmarked as spillover works to be completed next year utilising Plan allocation for 2008-09. This would result in lack of funds for implementing next year’s projects, they said

The KPPRS said that this scenario would amount to the local bodies losing one year’s development fund in the 11th Five Year Plan. This was part of a hidden agenda of the government to ‘rob’ the local bodies of their allocation, it added. KPPRS would stage a mass dharna in front of the Secretariat on October 24 to protest against what it called the State government’s reckless planning mechanism.

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