Disband dist project-monitoring panels, AAP to Union Ministry

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, November 30

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has urged the Union Rural Development Ministry to disband the District Vigilance and Monitoring Committees (DVMCs) established to monitor projects that fall under Central schemes. The party reasoned that these had "lost their relevance".

These monitoring committees are supposed to keep a tab on how funds are being spent on schemes such as the Indira Aawas Yojna, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Sarv Shikhsha Abhiyan, Pardhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna, besides MPLAD funds.

Punjab AAP convener and former minister Sucha Singh Chottepur said he had written a letter to the Union ministry to disband these committees as they served no purpose and were draining the state coffers. “These committees, which were set up on the directions of the Union Rural Development Ministry, should be dispensed with. Instead, a new mechanism should be put in place to check the progress of projects that are executed from funds given by the Centre to the state government…

“Moreover, the composition of these committees borders on being farcical. Take the example of the Gurdaspur DVMC. Its chairman is Vinod Khanna, who is a BJP MP. The committee has as its members all the nine MLAs of the Gurdaspur parliamentary constitutency, out of which five owe allegiance to the Congress. There is absolutely no possibility that the Congress legislators will ever attend a meeting to be chaired by a BJP MP. Likewise, during the tenure of Partap Singh Bajwa as Congress MP of Gurdaspur, several meetings of the DVMC were held from 2009 till 2014. However, all these meetings were boycotted by SAD and BJP legislators, killing the very purpose of setting up these committees,” said Chottepur.

He also demanded a CBI inquiry into funds doled out by Partap Singh Bajwa during his term as MP from 2009 to 2014.