The UPA government might be busy announcing social welfare schemes and preparing for the snap polls but a review of its Rs 48,000 crore flagship programme Bharat Nirman?s rural road project has a different tale to relate. Rural roads have not been able to cover even half of the targeted areas in states like Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and Jharkhand.
According to a recent monitoring done by the Planning Commission, Jharkhand has covered just 11.48% of the habitations targeted for rural road connectivity for the first two years of the programme (2005-07). The pace of implementation in the state is so sluggish that it has not even sent any new proposal for clearance of the Centre in the last 15 months. Jharkhand has managed to connect just 209 habitations against the targeted 1,821 in 2005-07.
Bihar clocked 39.99% connecting 1,183 habitations while the target was to connect 2,958 habitations. Another state that has done poorly is Orissa at 49.96%, connecting just 683 habitations out of the total 1,367.
West Bengal has connected only 1,930 habitations against the targeted 3,525 during 2005-07.
The rural roads component of Bharat Nirman is an ambitious project of the UPA government that aims at providing all weather connectivity to 66,802 habitations with 1.46 lakh km of rural roads by 2009.
Till March, 2007, 13,831 habitations have been connected. An amount of Rs 11,000 crore has been released by the Centre for the rural roads development in the current fiscal. The number of projects cleared till June this year is 2271.