TRANSFORMATION: Sukhbir clears Rs. 13,000 Cr for 12,775 villages

Chandigarh, November 1, 2012: All 12,775 villages of Punjab are in for complete transformation with Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today okaying Rs. 13000 crore Rural Development Plan.

In a high level meeting of Special Core Group in which Rural Development Minister Surjit Singh Rakhra, Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia, Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa, Education Minister Sikander Singh Maluka besides various MLAs participated, the Deputy Chief Minister said that this integrated Rural Development Plan would cover all the villages in three years in a phased manner. He said that the focus of integrated RDP plan would be complete concretization of all village lanes, phirnis besides providing under ground piped sewerage network as per the model design approved by him. He said that focus would be on maintaining quality control in work execution, completion of allotted work within stipulated time and completing the total development work of one village in one go.

Expressing concern over poor financial management of the panchayat funds, Badal said that Rural Development Department in future would transfer all the funds to Panchayats through Central Banking System online and seek utilization certificate of funds withdrawn from the bank accounts positively within one week. He said that failure to submit utilisation certificate would invite criminal action. He said that the works in the villages have to be executed by reputed infrastructure companies, who have to be allotted work of all villages located in one block.

Asking the department to tone-up its lax audit system, Badal said that instead of bi-yearly, the department would ensure complete audit of total Panchayats spending. He said that Financial Systems have to be made foolproof; systems leak proof and its compliance mandatory. He said that this could be ensured by professional and timely audit of the accounts and the systems. He asked Principal Secretary Finance to work out a
Special Audit System.

Prominent amongst those present in the meeting included Tota Singh, Former Minister, Mantar Singh Brar, Chief Parliamentary Secretary, Manpreet Singh Ayali, Daljeet Singh Cheema, Pargat Singh (all MLAs), Satish Chandra, Principal Secretary Finance, Mandeep Singh Sandhu, Principal Secretary Rural Development, Balwinder Singh Multani, Director Rural Development and Panchayats.