Oppositoin slams government for not using funds

HYDERABAD: Opposition parties on Wednesday lashed out at the state government for failing to release its share of funds for various Central government schemes and thereby, losing about Rs 10,000 crore funds since 2005. They demanded a white paper on the funds sanctioned by the Centre for various schemes, the state’s share released and the total amount which remained unutilised.Finance minister Anam Ramanarayana Reddy, who presented the statistics for the financial year 2011-12, stated that the government had released Rs 3,470 crore till January against its share of Rs 3,802 crore towards matching grant for the Central funds amounting to Rs 4,626 crore. He said the Centre has released Rs 2,402 crore till January end and of the total funds released, Rs 3,394 crore have been spent so far.TDP president and leader of the opposition N Chandrababu Naidu alleged that as much as Rs 9,997 crore was not availed by the state government as against Rs 21,000 crore released by the Centre in the last seven years. He said people were being deprived of their rightful funds due to the inefficiency of the state government for not following the Central government’s norms and not releasing the matching grant.He pointed out that the state government did not conduct elections to the local bodies thereby making Andhra Pradesh ineligible for Central funds. He alleged that the government has violated certain norms like merging the Central government’s Indira Awas Yojana scheme with the government’s housing schemes.Lok Satta MLA K Jayaprakash Narayan too found fault with the state government over its lackadaisical approach. He said the state government had never released its complete share towards the matching grant for the Central funds in  the last seven years. He pointed out that Andhra Pradesh is the only state in the country along with Madhya Pradesh which did not utilise funds under the Rashtriya Swasthya Yojana which provides health insurance to the poor.TDP MLA G Muddukrishnama Naidu, BJP floor leader G Kishan Reddy and CPI MLA K Sambasiva Rao also came down heavily on the state government on the issue.