Fund allocation: Narayanasamy brushes aside Puducherry CM's criticism

Of the Rs 2250 crore sanctioned for 2012-13 fiscal, the govt had spent only Rs 1270 crore, alleges Narayanasamy

Minister of State in PMO V Narayanasamy today charged Chief Minister and AINRC leader N Rangasamy with 'misleading' people by spreading wrong propaganda against the UPA government that the Centre has not made available sufficient funds available for Puducherry.

Speaking to reporters here, the Congress leader said it was mind boggling that the Chief Minister who had 'failed' to fully utilise the funds had been taking the people for a ride by stating that he (Narayanasamy) and the Centre had been choking availability of funds for Puducherry.

Of the Rs 2250 crore sanctioned for 2012-13 fiscal, the government had spent only Rs 1270 crore.No proper planning had been done and neither the Chief Minister nor any of his cabinet colleagues had approached the Centre with specific plans for development of Puducherry, he said.

Narayanasamy claimed he had been successfully representing to the Centre as an MP representing Puducherry, the needs of the union territory. These included massive drinking water projects, rural development activities, infrastructure and launching of projects like Technology Training scheme and establishing of National Institute of Technology.

Charging Rangasamy with misleading people by raising the statehood demand, he said this alone would be disadvantageous as the Central grant would be around 30 per cent of budgetary requirements and the state government would face the need to meet the remaining 70 per cent by raising its own resources.

Sstatehood with special category status alone would help as Puducherry would be able to get 90 per cent of its budgetary requirements as grant from the Centre. The Union territory would have to mobilise the balance from its own resources and hence Congress was championing for that

He claimed that the rural population which forms a big chunk of the total electorate always support Congress.

Narayanasamy said the achievements of the Congress led UPA had been epoch making and had been convincing people of its capability.

Leader of the Opposition and former Chief Minister V Vaithilingam released a brochure containing details of achievements of Narayanasamy over the last five years as Lok Sabha member.

Narayanasamy said AICC leader Sonia Gandhi and party Vice President Rahul Gandhi would embark on campaigning here. All details of the date of electioneering were being finalised and poll manifesto would be released soon, he said.