Bhubaneswar: Despite tall claims and clamour over the flagship programme of the state government for panchayat level development, huge amount of funds sanctioned under the Ama Gaon Ama Bikas (AGAB) Yojana has remained unspent.
A government statement on spending of the total allocated funds for the grassroots level scheme hinted that more than 50 per cent of the allocated funds have not been utilised yet while the people in the rural areas continue to suffer for lack of basic facilities like housing, health, drinking water, sanitation and others.
A statement on the expenditure of the government on the scheme revealed that while a total of 62,857 projects have been approved by the government and Rs 15,54,43,07,400 (Rs 1,554 crore) has been sanctioned, merely 46 per cent of the total amount — Rs 4,83,09,40,933 — has been utilised till now. In other words, around Rs 841 crore is still lying unutilised by the government.
The district-wise allocation revealed that the district from where Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik fights elections – Ganjam – seems to have got the lion’s share in the number of projects and total allocated funds under the scheme. The data revealed that Ganjam got 3,319 projects approved under AGAB with a total allocation of Rs 126 crore.
Some of the districts, on the other hand, got very few projects sanctioned under the scheme. Some of them are backward districts like Malkangiri (1,328 projects), Gajapati (680) and Deogarh (477).
