Patna, Nov. 14: The World Bank has questioned the seriousness of the Bihar government in making necessary preparations for launching a project which entails strengthening of panchayats in six districts of the state.

A letter from the agency (dated October 6, 2011) has also asked for fulfilment of many conditions such as appointment of staff for project implementation, appointment of consultants for different aspects of the project, agreement with the building construction department and developing a six-year implementation schedule.

The World Bank has indicated it would provide a loan of Rs 500 crore to the state for the Bihar Panchayat Strengthening Project over a period of five years. The districts to be covered under it are Patna, Bhojpur, Nalanda, Madhepura, Saharsa and Supaul. The project also entails capacity building of panchayat representatives and functionaries and construction of over 300 Panchayat Sarkar Bhavans in the 1,308 panchayats falling under the project districts.

Confirming receipt of the letter, panchayati raj department principal secretary Manoj K. Srivastava said: “The state government had been pursuing the project with all seriousness and commitment. Raising questions on its seriousness doesn’t look good, besides being contradictory to the fact that intense hard work has gone in to move forward the project since January 2011. The government, while continuing its dedicated work to advance the project, would soon send its considered response to the bank.”

He said: “From the beginning, the government has been doing a number of things as and when desired by the bank. But it has never been clear whether those are the final list of actions or would there be a number of other things that the bank would abruptly ask for to be done.”

Srivastava, however, refused to elaborate on what the bank had asked for.

A state government source, who is in the know of project-related developments since its conceptualisation towards the end of 2007, said the letter sent by the bank appeared to contradict its own position “appreciating” the progress made by the state.

According to the source, the first year (2008) was spent waiting for sanction of a grant of Rs 2.5 crore for conducting preparatory studies for project formulation.

The source said the next year, 2009, was spent on preparing the terms of reference of the preparatory studies and selection of consultancy firms through competitive bidding.

That year, the bank demanded a society be set up under the panchayati raj department for execution of the project. “The bank had earlier asked for a project implementation unit. All efforts on this front came to a naught once the new directive came,” the source added.

In April 2010, the bank added two more tasks as pre-project preparation work. It asked the government to organise workshops of stakeholders and send a team to Bengal on a study tour. Even these were complied with.

The bank then asked for six project documents to be submitted for appraisal. The bank also demanded an engineering cell within the society for undertaking construction of Panchayat Sarkar Bhavans. The government insisted that the building construction department was best suited for the job.

This was followed by discussions on the nature of the documents and this process continued till January 2011. The documents were prepared and sent to the bank for approval in March.

“In May, the bank came up with a new directive and asked for scaling down the implementation of the project in the first two years. Earlier, it had been decided that 45 per cent of panchayats would be taken up in the first year and the project would be scaled up to include all the target panchayats in the third year,” said the source.

“The sudden change in the bank’s stand led to many changes in the project implementation plan. Things were finally settled in September and a government team also went to Delhi for holding detailed discussions with the Bank. When we were expecting that final round of talks would be held for sanctioning of loan, the letter questioning the government’s seriousness came,” added the source.