Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has set the cat among the pigeons by telling Union minister for statistics and programme implementation MS Gill that the state has no staff or the wherewithal to monitor the spending under the Members of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD) scheme. The Centre would do well by monitoring on its own the end use of these funds released to Bihar MPs, Kumar said in a letter to Gill.
Local government agencies in each state are supposed to monitor the expenditure under the MPLAD scheme, under which R5 crore per annum is given to every MP to carry out certain development works.
In his letter, Kumar minced no words and said the Union ministry would have to figure out a way to monitor the spending.
Sources in both Bihar government and the Union ministry confirmed that such a letter had been written. ?The chief minister had received a letter from the minister (Gill) a couple of months ago, about the monitoring of MPLAD funds. After this letter, the chief minister responded that the state was not equipped to monitor the spending of the funds,? said an official source in the Bihar government.
?In fact, it was due to these reasons that the state government abolished the local area funds for Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs), the federal version of the MPLAD scheme, in 2010,? he added.
The Union ministry is yet to respond to Kumar?s reply, but the letter has put it in a fix. ?This is an unusual sort of response. Normally, state governments are a little worried that non-utilisation of funds could lead to these funds not being released again. But this is just absurd,? said a source in the ministry. ?We really don?t know how to respond to this,? he added. Bihar gets R280 crore per year under the MPLAD scheme.