The Committee for Implementing Dr. Nanjundappa Committee Recommendations to Redress Regional Imbalance will submit a report in September to the State government suggesting changes in implementing the works under the special development component, committee chairman Venkatrao Ghorpade has said.
Chairing a meeting to review the implementation of the works under the special development component here on Wednesday, Mr. Ghorpade said that certain changes should be made to the guidelines governing the utilisation of special grants to remove regional imbalance. At present, the system of preparing action plan to spend grants was highly centralised and it was done at the State-level. Due to this, many of the district officials, including Deputy Commissioners and Chief Executive Officers of the zilla panchayats, were unaware of the projects sanctioned to their districts under the special development component and the funds allocated to these projects.
Moreover, preparing the action plan in the taluks would help identify the local requirement and actively involve the district and taluk officials. The committee would also suggest some norms to fix percentage of grants under various components. Now, the committee has decided to urge the Chief Minister to link the documents so that the works and funds allotted are available in public domain, he added.
So far, Rs. 11,227 crore had been spent under the special development component and 92 per cent works have been executed. This year, the Chief Minister has enhanced the budgetary allocations from Rs. 2,000 crore per year to Rs. 3,000 crore and this would be continued for the next five years.
The focus of the committee is to improve agriculture, industrial trade and the social sector and accordingly, the funds are being divided into five different categories — asset creation, infrastructure and connectivity, beneficiary oriented scheme, utilities and services and capacity building and training. The government had also been asked to include review of the special grants at the monthly Karnataka Development Programme review meeting, he said.
