Saturday, March 26, 2011

‘Centre to probe bungling of PM grant for Vidarbha’-Montek Singh Ahluwalia

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Pradip Kumar Maitra, Hindustan Times
Nagpur, March 26, 2011

The deputy chairman of Planning commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said on Saturday that a Central team would probe the complaints of bungling of prime minister relief funds meant for the distressed farmers of six agrarian crisis-stricken districts of Vidarbha.

Ahuwalia said that there were complaints about the implementation of Rs 3,750-crore PM relief package to check the farmers’ suicide in Vidarbha.

The Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had visited Vidarbha region in mid-2006 and announced a bail-out package of Rs 3750 crore. However, the tragedy is still continuing despite the relief package. Over, 7500 farmers have ended their lives because of agrarian crisis since 2001.

The Planning Commission’s deputy chairman expressed concern over the continuous farm suicide in the region and said that the central team would probe the matter in detail.

Speaking at a function held earlier in the day, Ahluwalia said that if the country achieves capacity addition of 52,000 MW power generations by the end of 11th Five-Year Plan in 2012 despite much higher projection, it would certainly be an achievement.

The union government had revised its target of power capacity addition to 90,000 MW in the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12) in order to meet the growing demand of electricity in the country. The projections for power sector in the 11th plan were "unrealistic" and had to be scaled down, he pointed out.

According to him, initially the target was fixed for 78,000 MW of additional capacity, and then it was revised to 90,000. But within two years it was scaled down to 62,000, and now even if the country could add 52,000 MW, it would be a laudable effort.

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