The Centre has convened a meeting of Secretaries of Rural Development of 13 states where progress in the implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana has been slow, the Lok Sabha was informed on Thursday.
Responding to a calling attention motion by B C Khanduri of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said the need to expedite pending projects in these states would be emphasised at the meeting to be held in Delhi on August 29.
While rural roads is a state subject, the Rural Development ministry provides funds to states for construction and upgradation of roads under this scheme as 100 per cent central assistance.
"The responsibility for implementation of the programme rests with the state governments," he said. The motion related to the situation arising out of the unsatisfactory utilisation of funds under the PMGSY in Uttaranchal and the steps taken by the government in this regard.
Singh said the pace of implementation of the PMGSY in Uttaranchal was not satisfactory. He said 52 road works had been cleared by his ministry under Phase lll but no work had been completed.
On the complaint that adequate funds were not forthcoming from the Centre, he said release of funds under this programme was subject to achievement of certain levels of physical and financial progress in the previous phases.
Off the amount released for the scheme to the Uttaranchal government so far, as much as Rs 79 crore had not been spent and funds for the third phase had not yet been released.
For its part, the state government contended that the slow progress of works was due to the lengthy and multistage process of transfer of forest land, limited working seasons, extreme weather conditions, non-availability of contractors with adequate capacity, excessive rains and landslides during monsoon causing damage to the roads as also rocky mountainous stretches.
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Khanduri contended that road development work was going on at a snail's pace in Uttaranchal and asked whether the Centre was closely monitoring the implementation of the scheme.
He said there were several areas where people had to trek for 2 days because of absence of roads or roads in bad shape.
Observing that road works were not being properly executed in Uttaranchal, Singh said he had also written to the Chief Minister to expedite these projects. He said Centre was ready to extend all possible assistance while taking into account the difficulties coming the way of implementation of the PMGSY.
It was stressed that institutional, technical, managerial and contracting capacity needed to be enhanced in the state for improving the pace of the programme.