Punjab Govt scraps Guardians of Governance scheme

Ruchika M Khanna

Chandigarh, September 9

The state government today put to an end the Guardians of Governance (GoG) scheme, which was started with much fanfare by the former Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh. With this, about 4,300 ex-servicemen will be rendered jobless.

A decision to wind up the scheme was taken up at the Cabinet meeting today. This happened just two days after the state government had announced to give them the task of verifying the suspicious blue ration cards, which allow the card holders to get free wheat under the National Food Security Act.

However, Food Minister Lal Chand Kataruchak told The Tribune that this work would now be done by the local administration.

“There are several other ways to verify the ration cards and weed out the bogus ones. We will use Aadhaar linkage to purchases /income tax returns/bank accounts to get data on unauthorised free ration card holders,” he said.

Official sources say that the decision to scrap the scheme was taken in view of several complaints against the GoGs, especially in the rural areas, where they were alleged to be involved in local politics. “The state government was paying Rs 72 crore per annum as honorarium to these GoGs, and for a year they were not doing any work. It was only financially prudent to do away with this programme,” Chief Secretary Vijay Kumar Janjua told The Tribune.

For the past almost a year, since Capt Amarinder Singh stepped down as the Chief Minister, they were not assigned any work. Information gathered by The Tribune reveals that even the software application used by them to report on the development works being done in the villages has not been working for quite some time.

Every jawan was getting a monthly stipend of Rs 11,000, a supervisor Rs 13,000 and a tehsil head Rs 25,000. The district heads were being paid Rs 50,000 every month.

Was brainchild of Capt Amarinder

• Guardians of Governance was a flagship scheme of the Congress government under Capt Amarinder Singh
• The ex-servicemen were appointed by the government as GoGs to act as eyes and ears of the government in rural areas and monitor the development works there