Parliamentary panel seeks portal to monitor projects under MPLADS

The Standing Committee on Estimates was headed by BJP MP Girish Bhalchandra Bapat

A parliamentary panel has asked the government to come up with a portal to monitor projects under the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme so that developmental works do not suffer. The panel also noted that once an MP starts a project, and if it remains incomplete, state governments tend to neglect such projects even if the successor MP continues to pursue it.

The Standing Committee on Estimates, headed by BJP MP Girish Bhalchandra Bapat, has noted that as the nodal authority, the union ministry of statistics and programme implementation should have a portal where the progress of projects under the MPLADS could be appraised. “The Committee further feels that delays of any kind, if highlighted in an integrated portal, would enable the ministry to take appropriate action in time,” the committee had noted.

In response, the ministry has said that they take up cases of delay with state governments and that the monitoring mechanism for the MPLAD scheme is “robust”, and is spread through the central, state, and district levels with well-defined roles and responsibilities.

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“At the central level, the ministry holds meetings in the States and also at the Centre to review the implementation of the MPLAD Scheme. At the state/UT level, a committee is constituted under the chairmanship of the chief secretary/ development commissioner/ additional chief secretary to review the MPLADS implementation progress with the district authorities and MPs at least once a year. At the district level, the district authority reviews, every month and in any case at least once in every quarter, MPLADS works implementation with the implementing Agencies,” the ministry said in its reply.

The ministry also said that it is in the process of a comprehensive revision of the MPLADS guidelines and implementation of the revised fund flow procedure, wherein the ministry intends to put in place a system under which district authorities will not be required to wait for the actual funds to be released by the ministry. Instead, they will be allocated drawing limits for the entire financial year and the actual funds will flow to vendors directly on a real-time basis.