The Hindu - Karnataka 11.08.2009
Projects worth Rs. 20 cr. approved under BRGF
Staff Correspondent
Infrastructure in SC/ST Hostels to be improved
Zilla panchayat to produce documentary film on Backward Region Grant Fund scheme
Chitradurga: The Chitradurga zilla panchayat gave approval to Rs. 20.2 crore projects to the Central Government-sponsored Backward Region Grant Fund (BRGF) scheme. The decision was taken in the District Planning Committee (DPC) meeting chaired by zilla panchayat president L.B. Rajashekharappa here on Monday.
As per the BRGF guidelines, Rs. 16.16 crore would be utilised to develop rural areas while Rs. 4.04 crore would be spent by the City Municipal Council for improving infrastructure.
The meeting was convened to garner the suggestions of the zilla panchayat members on the proposed project report.
During the discussion, a number of members raised the issue of misappropriation of funds reported in various gram panchayats while purchasing material under the current year’s BRGF scheme.
It might be recalled that recently a member, Guruswamy, during the last general body meeting of the zilla panchayat had revealed the statistics about materials purchased at an extremely high rates than the market price by various gram panchayats in the district. Jagaluraiah, a member, felt the need to evolve a new strategy to prevent corruption. Then, Deputy Commissioner and the committee member Amlan Aditya Biswas suggested the members to adopt a resolution to purchase bulk materials only by the zilla panchayat instead of giving that power to gram panchayats.
The suggestion was unanimously accepted by the members and a resolution was passed to that effect.
Ravikumar, a member, raised objection to the proposal of purchasing materials such as cookers, mosquito nets, water heaters and UPS for SC/ST Hostels in the district. He suggested that funds should be used to construct more number of hostels for students of rural areas.
Mr. Biswas said that by mere construction of hostels would not serve the purpose of helping the SC/ST students unless they were provided with better facilities. “The Government has schemes and funds to construct hostels, thus instead of repeating the projects, the funds of BRGF could be used for improving infrastructure of the hostels”, he said.
The meeting also passed a resolution to scrap a few proposals such as holding street plays and printing publicity materials about the scheme. Instead, the meeting decided to spend the same amount in producing a documentary film about the scheme and display it in all the gram panchayats to spread awareness.