Nagpur district appears to be lagging in utilisation of funds released to it under District Annual Plan for the year 2021-22. As it came out in the meeting of District Planning Committee (DPC) at Dr Vasantrao Deshpande Hall here on Thursday, only 50.56 per cent of funds released could be utilised in the eight months -- April to November 2021. Dr Nitin Raut, Guardian Minister of district, expressed displeasure over this and directed the officials concerned to ensure that 100 per cent of the DPC funds are utilised by the end of the financial year. “I have asked the officials concerned to expedite necessary processes and utilise the funds. After the technical and administrative sanctions, the funds should be distributed to implementing agencies within next seven days,” said Dr Raut while addressing a press conference at Deshpande Hall here after the meeting.

 

Also, he said that the officers concerned would face action if the unutilised funds were surrendered at the end of the financial year. He stressed upon having co-ordinating officer at District Planning Office to monitor if the allocated funds were being spent within stipulated time. The approved annual plan allocation for the year 2021-22 for Nagpur district was of Rs 669.3470 crore. The district received the entire allocation. However, it could distribute only Rs 168.9271 crore to the implementing agencies concerned. As per the data-sheet placed before the DPC on Thursday, however, only Rs 85.4030 crore was utilised by the agencies till the end of November 2021. Thus, only 50.56 per cent of the distributed funds was utilised in eight out of total 12 months of this year. The amount utilised/spent till the end of November 2021 was only 12.76 per cent of the allocated amount. The district annual plan under DPC has three components -- General plan, Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan (SCSP), and Tribal Plan.

 

Under the district annual plan for 2021-22, of total allocation of Rs 669.3470 crore, Rs 500 crore was for General plan, Rs 127 crore for SCSP, and Rs 42.3470 crore for Tribal Plan. All the fund allocated was received by DPC. However, only Rs 168.9271 crore was distributed to implementing agencies. This amount included Rs 134.8182 crore for General plan, Rs 14.9603 crore for SCSP, and Rs 19.1486 crore for Tribal Plan. As against this, only Rs 85.4030 crore could be utilised by the agencies concerned till the end of November 2021. Of this, Rs 66.1405 crore was utilised under the head of General plan, Rs 13.3752 crore under SCSP, and Rs 5.8873 crore under Tribal Plan. Though only 50.56 per cent of distributed funds could be utilised so far, the implementing agencies have submitted proposals for works worth Rs 955.3839 crore for the upcoming year 2022-23. This exceeds the ceiling of Rs 458.2519 crore set by the Government. As compared to the Government ceiling, the agencies have raised additional amount of Rs 497.1320 crore. Of the allocation sanctioned under General plan for 2021-22, as much as 30 per cent was to be kept for COVID-19 related works and strengthening of district-level health infrastructure.

 

Accordingly, Rs 50 crore would be made available through reconciliation. By the end of November 2021, works worth Rs 80.0429 crore have been approved for COVID-19 related works. Of this amount, total Rs 58.7337 crore has been released to agencies. From this, the district-level technical committee has proposed works worth Rs 273.46 crore and liability of Rs 290.04 crore is there concerning works of the year 2020-21. Considering this, the total reconciliation proposal is for Rs 85.6779 crore, said Dr Raut. To a question, Dr Raut said that the healthcare machinery was prepared to tackle Omicron cases of COVID-19. Sunil Kedar, Animal Husbandry Minister; Rashmi Barve, President of Zilla Parishad (ZP); Dayashankar Tiwari, Mayor; Krupal Tumane, MP; Krishna Khopde, Mohan Mate, Vikas Kumbhare, Vikas Thakre, Tekchand Sawarkar, Adv Ashish Jaiswal, Pravin Datke, Raju Parwe, Nago Ganar, all of them legislators; Radhakrishnan B, Municipal Commissioner; Vimala R, District Collector; Manoj Suryawanshi, Chairman of Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT); Yogesh Kumbhejkar, Chief Executive Officer of ZP; and officers of agencies concerned and members of the DPC attended the meeting. Rajesh Gaikwad, District Planning Officer, conducted the proceedings of the meeting and proposed a vote of thanks. 

 

‘Check quality of works, blacklist erring contractors’ During the meeting of DPC, legislators of various parties raised the issue of various work contracts going at ‘below rates’ and adverse impact of this on quality of works. In response, Dr Nitin Raut asked the officers concerned to check the quality of works and blacklist the erring contractors. For various developmental works being undertaken from district annual plan funds, bids quoting rates at least 30-40 per cent below the tender price were being received. Taking serious cognisance of this, DPC members and Dr Raut said that this was affecting the quality and standard of the works done. He appreciated the step of blacklisting of contractor by ZP, and asked other agencies including Nagpur Municipal Corporation, NIT, Public Works Department etc to initiate similar action. For scrutiny of the works, a committee headed by District Collector should be formed, he directed.