Cong to urge Centre to remove Raman’s photo from smart cards

 

Decision taken during monitoring committee meeting

Finds irregularities in several Centrally-sponsored schemes

Raipur, July 15, 2011 

The state Congress will urge Union government to remove Chief Minister Raman Singh’s photograph from smart cards being provided to the BPL families under Centrally-sponsored Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY). The decision was taken during district-level meeting of party’s monitoring committee at Congress Bhawan on Friday.

In the meeting, Mayor Kiranmayi Nayak raised the issue of photo graph of the CM put in the smart cards and alleged that the state government was deceiving people by claiming all the Central schemes as its own.

The incharge of Raipur Urban Tarun Chaterjee, who chaired the meeting, informed that irregularities surfaced in about 16 Centrally-sponsored schemes including Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), water supply and sanitation schemes, Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY), Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), mid-day meal programmes, health schisms, child welfare schemes, smart card schemes under RSBY, etc.

“The Centre has allocated about Rs 4000 crore to the state government for 16 schemes in this financial year, but we have learnt that irregularities have been done in these schemes in large scale. We are collecting evidences pertaining to irregularities and would then submit the detailed report to the Centre,” Chaterjee said.

The DCC president Inderchand Dhariwal said that the Centre had released Rs 391 crore to the state some five years back to construct 27976 pucca houses for slum dwellers under JNNURM’s Basic Service to Urban Poor (BSUP) scheme, but none of the eligible beneficiary got the house by far.  He suggested for constitution a committee to inquire into the matter.

The Raipur Municipal Corporation (RMC) corporator Pramod Dubey pointed out towards corruption prevailed in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and said the students were not getting benefit of the scheme. The party decided to form a separate committee to probe into this issue.

Earlier, the meeting of party’s state-level monitoring committee was convened by Arvind Netam on July 13 but only four district incharges were present in it. Considering this, Netam announced to convene another state-level meeting in next 6-7 days.

The meeting was attended by Madan Taleda, Dr Niranjan Haritwal, Ghanshyam Raju Tiwari, Avtar Singh Saini, Rajesh Thakur and Mamta Rai along with RMC corporators Manoj Kandoi, Rakesh Dhotre, Samir Akhtar and Jagdish Ahuja.