The government and the Opposition on Thursday traded charges in the Assembly over the underutilisation of funds for Centrally sponsored schemes (CSS).
While the UDF accused the government of failing to spend over ₹2,000 crore of Central assistance for various projects, the government asserted that it had spent Central funds in excess of the outlay for the last year.
Moving notice for an adjournment motion on the issue in the Assembly, Congress leader K. Muraleedharan said Central assistance under the Kuttanad package, Prime Minister’s Gram Sadak Yojana and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme had lapsed.
Pointing out that Kerala lagged far behind other States in tapping the Central government for funds, he attributed this to the failure to submit projects on time and the infighting among bureaucrats in the State. Even the funds that were released have not been utilised on time, he observed.
Replying to the notice, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the underutilisation of Central funds had happened during the previous UDF regime. The LDF government had spent ₹6,806 crore on Centrally sponsored schemes against an outlay of ₹6,534 crore during 2016-17.
The situation, he said, was different during the previous UDF regime when hardly half of the outlay on the schemes was utilised. Observing that the State’s outlay for the CSS had been drastically squeezed, he alleged that the NDA government at the Centre was using the CSS as a tool to promote its liberalisation policy.
“Funds are allotted only for projects that suit the liberalisation agenda of the Centre. Many of them are not even relevant for the State,” he said, alleging that the State was not taken into confidence on the outlay. Mr. Vijayan said the government had introduced a decentralised Web-based system to monitor and implement the CSS.
Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala said the State had failed to tap assistance for projects. In the absence of proper evaluation and monitoring, projects were not completed on time, he added.
