Third-party monitoring mandatory in U'khand

Third-party monitoring of development works by various departments of the government in Uttarakhand has become mandatory.

A total of 155 government projects have come under the scanner so far through such monitoring. Of these, there are 86 where irregularities were noticed, a top official said. “We have advised all these departments to take remedial measures in order to maintain high quality,” he added.

The government has hired three private agencies to technically monitor all those projects where investments are more than Rs 5 crore. These agencies are Sriram, TUV-SUD and VKS Infrastructure. These agencies are monitoring 21 projects, which currently include a series of works related to the recently concluded Maha Kumbh at Haridwar where the central grant was Rs 500 crore.

Other projects include the Tehri pumping programme and Nanghat water supply system.

In other projects where the investments are between Rs 1 to 5 crore, a team of the planning commission would monitor these through a team of retired engineers.

In the rest of the projects where the investments are less than Rs one crore, the department can make provision for the third party monitoring themselves. In addition to this, the government is also regularly monitoring the plan expenditures by the state departments for the year 2010-11.

In a high level meeting today, planning minister Prakash Pant said the government has so far made a budget outlay of Rs 5,117 crore, out of which Rs 1,901 crore has already been sanctioned which is 37 per cent of the total budget. The various departments have so far spent Rs 421 crore which is 22 per cent of the sanctioned budget.

Departments like civil aviation, Information Technology and housing have been found slow in spending the budget. On the other hand, sugarcane and transport have taken the lead, with cent per cent spending. “We have told all those departments which are showing slackness to speed up the development works,” added Pant.