Giving reasons for the delay in deputing officers in LAEO, the source said: “As officers had to be taken from different departments, it took time to complete the formalities. Now that all these things have been done, there would be no problem in carrying out schemes under the CMADS in the current fiscal.”
Even deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi defended the government when his attention was drawn towards the surrender of funds.
“There were some teething problems as a new organisation had to be set up from the scratch to implement the CMADS. The development work, however, would not suffer and we would sanction double amount for 2012-13 to make up for the works which could not be carried out in 2011-12,” Modi told The Telegraph.
He said the government was also working out modalities allowing introduction of a clause in the rules so that funds sanctioned under the CMADS did not lapse and a provision for rolling plan.
A senior government officer closely associated with the implementation of the CMADAS claimed that the government was seized with the issue of non-utilisation of Rs 325 crore in 2011-12 and in all likelihood funds to the tune of Rs 650 crore would be sanctioned for 2012-13. “Meanwhile, LAEO has started the tendering process for the approved schemes so that work could start right from the beginning of the current fiscal,” he added.
The Opposition is not impressed with the government’s stand, though. “Nitish seems to be in a hurry. Else, he would not have scrapped LAD before putting a system in place for the implementation of the new scheme,” the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Abdul Bari Siddiqui, said.
He said he had spoken against the scrapping of LAD funds when the idea was floated. “The government claimed that there was large-scale corruption in the implementation of LAD. I had raised a point before the chief minister that going by that logic, many departments and government offices should be closed because corruption is rampant in government departments and offices,” Siddiqui said.
He claimed that the chief minister also owed an explanation to the people of the state for keeping them deprived of development funds, which could have been used for schemes of local needs, for a year.
