Bengal government starts groundwork for meeting with Centre on dues under rural schemes

Although no date has yet been fixed, we are keeping ourselves ready so that we can present our case properly during the meeting,” said a senior state government official

Narendra Modi and Mamata Banerjee, File image

Pranesh Sarkar, TT, Calcutta, 23.12.23  : The Bengal government has started preparing itself for the meeting to be held between the officials of central and state governments over the release of funds under rural development schemes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed such parleys following a memorandum submitted by a Trinamul Congress delegation led by Mamata Banerjee.

“We have heard that such a meeting will be held soon. Although no date has yet been fixed, we are keeping ourselves ready so that we can present our case properly during the meeting,” said a senior state government official.

The chief minister had laid stress on releasing over Rs 15,000 crore under the rural development schemes immediately. The Centre had stopped the release of funds for projects that guarantee 100 days of work and for the construction of roads and homes in villages. The Centre withheld the funds alleging misappropriation and other irregularities.

Sources in the panchayat department have said the focus right at the moment is on the compilation of all documents to counter the allegations based on which the release of the funds has been stopped.

“The Centre raised several issues over the past few months and asked us to initiate steps to ensure that such things didn’t occur again. We have taken steps and sent the action-taken reports to the Union government repeatedly, but the funds have not been released. We will place the action-taken reports again at the meeting,” said an official.

The sources said the Narendra Modi government had initially pointed out that the funds were being misappropriated under some projects taken up under the 100-day job scheme. The state was asked to recover the misappropriated funds and take action against the guilty.

“We have already recovered some funds that were misappropriated from the panchayats against which allegations were levelled. Moreover, FIRs were lodged against some panchayat functionaries and employees. Police will probe these cases and take action. We will produce documents during the meeting on how actions were taken against the guilty,” said another official.

Apart from these, the panchayat department officials will present during the meeting how several other steps were taken to prevent the misappropriation of funds under the schemes to be carried out by the department in the future.

A bureaucrat said those steps had been mentioned by the state repeatedly before the Centre whenever it had sought clarification. However, the funds were not released. Now, the state would seek clarification from the Centre whether these steps were not enough to check corruption because the Union government had earlier suggested similar steps.

Not only in the 100-day job scheme, the state will also point out that it had initiated steps as directed by the Centre to recover funds embezzled under the rural housing scheme.

“Initially, it was alleged that we had changed the name of the scheme to Banglar Bari from the PMAY. Since the issue was brought to our notice, we found that in some areas, the project was named Banglar Bari by block-level officials. We have corrected the faults. Moreover, we have carried out a three-step verification before finalising the list of 11.36 lakh beneficiaries. Still, no funds have been released. We will place these points at the meeting,” said an official.