The Times Of India       26.11.2010

CM questions MCD on funds

NEW DELHI: Thursday in the Delhi Assembly was the day of going after institutions headed by the lieutenant governor.

While MLAs raised the issue of traffic problems in the city, the chief minister, choose to answer a matter raised by Bawana MLA Surendra Kumar about the state of roads in his constituency. Dikshit not just ordered a probe into what happened to the funds given for those roads to the Rural Development Board, but also demanded that MCD should submit accounts of the monies they receive from the state government. The traffic police comes under the L-G as does MCD.

Replying to the special mention, Dikshit conceded that the roads in Bawana and surrounding areas are indeed very bad and asked PWD minister Rajkumar Chauhan to order a probe into what happened to the funds sanctioned for their development. "Not just that I would want MCD too, to tell us how they spend the money we give. We give thousands of crores to them and then we hear of scams. Look at the amount of money they took from us for sweepers and it turned out it was a sham and they were all ghost employees. This is not acceptable. It is public money we are giving them, they need to give us details of the spending.''

Later, answering a short duration discussion of traffic initiated by MLA Mukesh Sharma, Dikshit pointed out that modern traffic lights have not been installed at several crucial points and the traffic police should, during the monsoon, undertake a survey to find out which traffic lights are working and which are not. Police commissioner B K Gupta was also present in the House during the discussion.

Dikshit, however, also congratulated the traffic police for their wonderful work during the Commonwealth Games. But she pointed out that the city needs more elaborate implementation of lanes for all kinds of vehicles depending on their speed, including cycle rickshaws. She added that Delhi government is willing to construct more flyovers, underpasses and FOBs on receiving specific inputs from the traffic police.

Sharma pointed out that traffic police is concentrating more on challans than on managing traffic. The other speakers in the discussion were Naseeb Singh, Shoaib Iqbal, Harishankar Gupta and Ramsingh Netaji.