Centre Delaying Backward Area Plan
Orissa has accused the Centre of misleading the people in the name of long-term action plan (LTAP) for uplift of backward areas of undivided Kalahandi and Bolangir and Koraput districts which are infamous for hunger-related deaths.
The Rs 5,527 crore plan, popularly known as KBK project, has not recieved formal approval of the Centre even after five years of its launch, according to state finance minister R K Patnaik.
Patnaik told newsmen here today that though the Centre intermittently sanctioned money for the programme, it was still being run on an adhoc basis. He blamed the successive governments at the Centre for adopting a lackadaisical attitude towards the project and not giving it a statutory sanction.
He pointed out that as the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) was the supervising authority for the implemetation of the project, things moved only when the Prime Minister made a statement on the issue.
However, the initiative would get lost in bureacratic red-tapism, he observed and decried the "piecemeal" way of running the programme.
Stating that people in the state had deliberately been kept in the dark over the issue for political gains, he said that the state government was determined to make public all the relevant facts, depicting the exact status of the project.
The ambitious programme was launched in 1995-96 during the tenure of Congress government by the then Prime Minister Narasihma Rao.
The project envisaged all-round development of backward Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput districts.
The original term of the project was for five years from 1995-96 to 2000-2001 during which an estimated Rs 4,557 crore was supposed to be pumped into various poverty alleviation schemes in these areas. However, of this, Rs 4,168 crore constituting the normal plan sanction for the stipulated period, the additonal funds requirement for the project was only Rs 389 crore.
However, against this need, Patnaik said the Centre had released only Rs 20.49 crore in the first three years (from 1995-96 to 1997-98) of the launching of the programme.
Similarly, the Centre had given Rs 55.80 crore against the projected outlay of Rs 544 crore in 1998-99 and Rs 57.60 crore against an outlay of Rs 565.45 crore in 1999-2000, he added.
Patnaik informed that following the coming of the BJP government at the Centre, the scope and term of the project had been altered.
The implementation period of the project now spans over nine years from 1998-99 to 2006-2007.
The total projected outlay for the programme has also been increased to Rs 5527.41 crore.
Meanwhile, the outlay for the current year has been downsized from Rs 616 crore to Rs 381 crore on the instruction of the Centre which has released Rs 37 crore till date
Describing the funds allocation as meagre and insufficient, he demanded that the Centre should immediately adopt the project in a formal manner and earmark adequate funds for it.