Odisha blames Centre over slow pace of rural road construction

Says Centre is ignoring state's demand of Rs 1,600 cr to rebuild 3,000 km roads destroyed in cyclone Phailin

The state government today said due to delays in release of funds meant for Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY), the actual target to complete rural road construction could not be achieved.

“The centre is delaying release of money for PMGSY which is why there is considerable delay in implementation of the scheme,” said rural development minister Badri Patra in the assembly while answering a query related to the central government sponsored scheme.

Odisha was allocated Rs 17,814 crore by the Union government under the scheme between 2001-02 and 2014-15. But actual release of the fund has been only Rs 11,942 crore, causing a gap of Rs 5,872 crore.

The centre is also showing apathy towards the state’s demand of Rs 1,600 crore to reconstruct the 3,000 km roads destroyed in cyclone Phailin in 2013. “They had agreed to our proposal of Rs 1,600 crore to reconstruct the PMGSY roads destroyed in Phailin. But the amount is yet to be released,” said Patra.

In the scheme, the state has a target to construct 45,190 km rural roads. So far only 30,872 km roads have been constructed and the rest work is at different stages of construction.

The government said, even after completion of the target, several hundred villages of the state will be left unconnected due to stringent rules of the scheme.

“We have asked them several times to relax the population criteria to include villages under PMGSY as we have many villages with very low population. Since they did not respond, we had to come up with our own scheme,” said Patra, citing Mukhya Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna, which was launched last year to cover the villages left out by the scheme.

In the discussion today, the treasury bench strongly countered corruption charges in the scheme, saying, the fresh mandate in May 2014 proves that the people perceive Biju Janata Dal (BJD) government in the state to be clean.

Patra said, the three tier monitoring system in the scheme (by Centre, state and local panchayat) almost makes it corruption-proof.

He further said there is a need to increase funding for the scheme.

Last December, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had asked the Centre to increase allocation under PMGSY for the current fiscal from Rs 1,178 crore to Rs 1,800 crore. The demand was placed by the state government in its pre-Budget memorandum submitted to the Centre.