After NRHM scam, Centre lens on funds

Hit by the multi-crore National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam in Uttar Pradesh, the union government is working on a move to strengthen the monitoring of Central programmes at the block and district levels.

The proposed supervision — mulled by the Centre’s project monitoring arm under the ministry of programme implementation — will involve the use of information technology, and will be done with the involvement of the respective state governments. Such a measure also aims to establish an effective grievance redressal mechanism.

“If we had properly monitored the NRHM funds spent to Uttar Pradesh, then scams like the one that happened could have been avoided,” according to minister of state for statistics and programme implementation Srikant Jena. His ministry, which is the government’s nodal arm for monitoring all Central schemes, wants to ensure that funds allocated for all social welfare programmes and others reach the beneficiary, Jena told Business Standard.

A senior official said the ministry was planning to cross-check the data and report on the implementation of programmes through an independent authority, through the involvement of the state government. More than Rs 8,000 crore is alleged to have been siphoned off from the funds meant for the centrally-sponsored NRHM programme in Uttar Pradesh. It is projected to be one of biggest scams to have happened during chief minister Mayawati’s tenure.

The scam had come to light when Vinod Kumar Arya, a chief medical officer with the family welfare department of Uttar Pradesh, was killed in October 2010.

The murder was followed by the killing of Chief Medical Officer B P Singh outside his home in April last year. Two months later, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Y S Sachan, was also found dead inside a Lucknow jail.