Centre stops grants under watershed scheme

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, July 1

Projects worth about Rs 700 crore, launched in five districts of the state under the Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP), are in limbo. The Union Government has not released any fund for these programmes since the last year.

Even the salaries of the employees, hired on contract under the said project, are now being paid from funds allocated for development in the first instalment.

Sources here said the previous UPA Government had launched the IWMP. Under the programme, District Watershed Development Agencies (DWDA) were formed in five districts of the state, including Kangra, Shimla, Chamba, Mandi and Solan.

These agencies submitted projects worth Rs 700 crore in their respective districts that were sanctioned by the Union Government.

The projects included works for soil conservation, making small check dams in villages and moisture conservation in soil and plantations. All these works were to be carried out in rural areas of the state.

The state government received the first instalment to implement the projects during the stint of the UPA II. In Kangra, Rs 22 crore was sanctioned against the total project cost of Rs 155 crore as the first instalment.

However, after the NDA Government came to power, the entire funding for the project was stopped.

By paying salaries from the amount meant for development, the projects are being hit further.

A senior official in the department of rural development said they had been informed that the entire funds earmarked under the IWMP were now being diverted by the NDA Government under the new Rashtriya Krishi Sanchai Yojana. However, presently, nobody was sure about the future of the projects that have already been started under the IWMP.

Many soil conservation works being carried out in rural areas by erecting retaining wall would be hit in case they are not completed soon, he added.

Besides the IWMP, many other projects started by the UPA Government have been hit in the past one year as the present NDA Government is busy coining new schemes to replace the old ones. However, officials working at the ground level are of the view that the work on the schemes that have already been started should not be stopped or else the public money spent on them would go waste.