State urges Centre to clear dues for rural road construction
Kolkata: The Bengal government has urged the Centre to immediately release Rs 1,100 crore that it owes to the state for construction of rural roads.
The amount includes pending Rs 600 crore of the 2019-20 fiscal while the remaining Rs 500 crore is of this year as already construction on a large stretch has already been done in the first five months of the current financial year.
Till March 2021, the state Panchayats and Rural Development department has set a target to construct 2,000 km rural roads under the Banglar Gramin Sadak Yojana of which 350 km is already complete. But the Centre is yet to release any money for this fiscal.
According to an official, it is hampering the progress of the project. Even the work of tar-layering cannot be carried out in certain stretches of the newly-constructed roads.
The Centre provides 60 percent of the project cost while the state bears the remaining for construction of rural roads.
The state Panchayats and Rural Development department implements the project and it has written to the Centre this week seeking to release Rs 500 crore for the current fiscal.
Though the Centre provides 60 percent of the project cost, the state government also needs to spend almost the equal share as it has to address many other components related to the construction of rural roads.
The Bengal government once again urged the Centre to clear Rs 600 crore of the last fiscal as the state has already spent the amount.
In the 2019-20 fiscal, above 2,400 km roads were constructed under the scheme.
In the first four months of the current fiscal, construction of 288 km roads was completed and another 60 km was completed in August. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has directed to complete the task at the earliest while addressing the recently held virtual review meeting.
Since inception of the scheme, a total stretch of 34,000 km rural roads has been constructed till date.
Interestingly, more than 12,000 km of them have been constructed in the past three years. At the same time, repairing 13,000 km of the previously constructed roads has also been carried out in the past three-and-half-years.
This comes when the Centre already owes Rs 53,000 crore to the state and is yet to release the same despite repeated appeals by the Bengal government.
Even Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a video-conference to look into the matter.
Subrata Mukherjee, the state Panchayats and Rural Development minister, said: "Delay in releasing funds of course affects the work. Most importantly, it hits the morale of people executing the same at the grassroot level."
