The Madhya Pradesh government has denied allegations of delaying the completion of National Highway projects and dubbed it as "far from facts and baseless."
An official release on Monday said that as per factual position received from Public Works Department, the process of acquiring land for construction of National Highways falls under the purview of National Highways Act.
This process can be undertaken only by the Union Road Transport and National Highways Ministry and it also applies to land acquisition for BOT projects being undertaken by National Highways Authority of India.
Assistance required in this regard is given promptly by the state government. Concerned projects are not getting delayed due to any shortcoming on the part of the state government, it said. The release clarified that the Union
Government has accorded in-principle sanction of Rs 422.50 crore and not of Rs 479 crore. Under non-plan (PR) in-principle sanction of Rs 40 crore has been accorded under annual maintenance head.
The state government has sent Rs 381 crore estimates to the Union Government for sanction. Administrative sanction for any of these estimates has not yet been accorded by the Union Government. It has been clarified that in-principle sanction is given for certain identified works by the Union Government.
After receipt of sanction, estimates of these projects are sent to the Union Government for administrative sanction. Tenders are invited after receipt of administrative sanction.
If minimum rates quoted in the tender are five per cent higher than tender rates then the estimate is sent again to the Central Government for revised administrative sanction.
In many cases, tender validity period expires till revised administrative sanction is received. On inviting tender again, not only higher rates are quoted but the work gets delayed further.
It is clear from these facts that the system for sanctioning such estimates at the Centre is erroneous. It almost becomes clear that work on project for which in-principle sanction has been accorded can be started only during next year since most of National Highways are under National Highways Authority of India and some of these roads have been handed over to the State Government only some time ago.
Therefore, available administrative sanction for these works is negligible. In so far as expenditure of Rs. 46.71 crore is concerned, it is under last year s administrative sanction.
Sanction of Rs. 479 crore has been quoted as sanction for this year, but administrative sanction of not a single rupee has been accorded by the Union Government for it. As far as maintenance and contingency expenditure is concerned, funds will be necessarily spent by the end of financial year.
Even if additional funds are provided to the State Government under these heads, they will be spent. Importantly, the State Government had to accord administrative sanction of Rs. 297 crore from its own resources for maintenance of roads due to complicated sanction process of the Union Government.
Of this, Rs. 93 crore is being spent during current fiscal. Similarly, the funds are provided to State Government under Central Road Fund as state s share on the basis of a prescribed formula.Under this head, Rs. 178.87 crore has been received by the State Government till June 2013, the release said.
This amount has been provided against expenditure made by the State Government during year 2012-13. The fact in this regard is that Rs. 290 crore was spent by the State Government during year 2012-13. Against this, Rs. 178.87 crore has been received while remaining Rs. 111 crore expenditure has been borne by the State Government.
Maintenance work of National Highway 75 extension Sidhi-Singrauli has been done with total transparency as per rules. As far as suspension of officers and employees of Sidhi division is concerned, this has been done due to lack of quality found in some works sanctioned during year 2010-11, it added.
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