Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, May 23: Former Minister and senior Congress leader, Raman Bhalla today said that district boards were meant to formulate and analyze the plan and non- plan budget and lay down the policy guidelines for the Block Development Councils and Panchayats and coordinate poverty and employment generation, but unfortunately there has been hardly any serious effort from the Government to financially empower these boards.
Reacting over the recently conducted District Development Board meetings, former Minister Mr Bhalla alleged that these institutions of democracy have been rendered as almost defunct and business there has been proving as futile exercise.
“It is unfortunate that district allocations are so insignificant that these important institutions have been rendered futile,” Bhalla said adding that one fails to understand what are the members of these boards supposed to decide when the allocations are so meager and the decisions taken are not implemented?” he asked.
Referring to the decisions taken in the DDB meetings in 2015 across the State held under the chairmanship of the then Chief Minister, Mr Bhalla said that the Action Taken Report on these decisions is quite disappointing. He said many important decisions taken in the Board meetings are not implemented and that is why the developmental schemes do not reach to the people on ground.
The Congress leader said that many important decisions taken in the board meetings have not been implemented, preventing the developmental schemes from reaching to people. “Projects undertaken various schemes like MG-NREGA, IAY and PMGSY were not completed in stipulated time and financial targets proposed in these meetings could not yield the desired results,” he said.
“Instead of empowering these institutions by way of giving adequate powers and keeping sufficient funds at their disposal, Government preferred to ignore the decisions taken by these boards”, Mr Bhalla regretted.
He said that non-seriousness on the part of the departments is gauged from the fact that decisions of the District Development Boards have the endorsement of Ministers, Members of Legislative Assembly and Members of Legislative Council that too, in the presence of senior functionaries of various departments, but even then are not properly implemented.
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