Welfare schemes not effectively formulated despite spending thousands of crores: SC

The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Central government why it has formulated welfare schemes when these were not effectively implemented even after spending thousands of crores of rupees.

A division bench of Justice M.B. Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta expressed shock on the government spending huge amount of money on welfare schemes which it has not implemented effectively, terming it a "wastage of tax payers' money".

The bench even asked the government why it does not "scrap" these schemes. It added: "You come out with good schemes but if you cannot implement them, then why these schemes have been made."

Asking Additional Solicitor General Atmaram Nadkarni, representing the Central government, to assist the court for a better mechanism to deal with the issue of urban homeless people, the court slammed the Central and state governments for their apathy towards this section and asked them to show some compassion towards them.

The bench said state governments should be sensitive towards the homeless as it appeared that they were not concerned about the hardships these poor people faced. It slammed Haryana and West Bengal for not giving complete details of expenditure of funds allocated to them by the Central government under the scheme for urban homeless.

It also took strong objection to the details in affidavit submitted by Haryana government, saying various issues were not explained and asked the state Chief Secretary to appear before it.

Taking into note a report of court-appointed committee, the court said as per a report, there were around 1.8 lakh urban homeless in Uttar Pradesh while the capacity at the shelter homes in the state was only around 6,000.

The counsel appearing for Uttar Pradesh said a comprehensive affidavit will be filed by the state about details of the funds received from the Centre and the expenditure incurred by it under the urban homeless scheme.

The court asked the West Bengal to submit all details about the funds and expenditure by the state and the amount spent on the construction of shelter homes.

Amount allocated by the Centre under the scheme should directly go for the benefit of the urban homeless people, said the court.

--IANS

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