Venkatarao Y. Ghorpade, chairman of the high-powered committee for the implementation of the D.M. Nanjundappa Committee recommendations, which looked at redressing regional imbalances, said on Thursday that a qualitative assessment of the works taken up by the Special Development Programme (SDP) was difficult because of the lack of proper indexing.
Presiding over a review meeting of the special purpose vehicle, Mr. Ghorpade said of the Rs. 11,272 crore released from 2007-08 for this purpose, Rs. 10,338 crore was spent in the 114 backward taluks, which have been identified as ‘backward’, ‘more backward’ and ‘most backward’.
He said though a lot has been done to improve infrastructure and create new assets, helping the taluks rise up in the Human Development Index (HDI), the lack of proper indexing of the assets/infrastructure has made it hard to do a qualitative assessment of the results of the spending.
Mr. Ghorpade said although it was originally planned to put the SDP to work from 2007-08 to 2014-15, the Congress government had decided to extend it by another five years, with a yearly allocation of Rs. 3,000 crore.
He said during 2015-16, the government had allotted Rs. 2,300 crore to the SDP, but for this fiscal, Rs. 3,000 crore has been earmarked in the State Budget. Mr. Ghorpade asked officials to create a separate document in their records on the works taken up under the SDP. He added that all the works taken up using the SDP funds should carry a notice board stating the amount spent and the nature of work. This would ensure proper assessment at least in future, he said.
Medical Education Minister Sharanprakash Patil, Deputy Commissioner Vipul Bansal, Kalaburagi Zilla Panchayat CEO Anirudh Sravan, Yadgir Deputy Commissioner Manoj Jain and other senior officials were present.
