Centre announces Rs 63-cr aid for West Bengal

OCT 14: Waiving conditions for providing assistance to flood-hit West Bengal, Centre today announced immediate release of Rs 63.26 crore t...

OCT 14: Waiving conditions for providing assistance to flood-hit West Bengal, Centre today announced immediate release of Rs 63.26 crore to the state for relief work.

Union Rural Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, announcing the release of the second instalment of funds under the Employment Assurance Scheme, Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana and Indira Awas Yojana, told reporters that the Centre’s decision to waive the required procedure and release funds was aimed at extending all possible assistance to the people in the nine affected districts of West Bengal.

The release of the second instalment includes a sum of Rs 20.90 crore under the Indira Awas Yojana, Rs 23.85 crore under the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana and Rs 18.51 crore under the Employment Assurance Scheme, he said.

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Naidu said the Centre would not release further instalments of funds to the states unless they provided utilisation certificates and audit reports for funds already released. But keeping in view the gravity of the situation, the Centre had decided to waive the conditions and release the second instalment for West Bengal, he said.

Stating that four out of nine districts of West Bengal are not eligible for the housing scheme, Naidu said the Centre had decided to waive the condition and include these districts too for relief.

The release of funds followed requests from the state unit of the BJP and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee who met Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha to seek an early release of funds to the state, he said.

Naidu said he had also reviewed the position with regard to funds available with the state government under different programmes of the Rural Development Ministry.

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The Minister said he had also written to West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu and requested him to personally review the utilisation of funds so that the benefits under different progrmmes reached the people of the state.

As per available information, the expenditure incurred by the state this year was Rs 130.35 crore against the total available funds of Rs 524.87 crore, which worked out to 24.84 per cent, he said.

During 1999-2000, the overall utilisation of funds was about Rs 465.80 crore, out of a total available funds of Rs 870.34 crore, Naidu said adding this indicated that the state could not utilise Rs. 231 crore during the year.