PM's rural road project roadblocked

New Delhi: Whistleblower Satyendra Dubey, a 31-year-old IIT engineer, was killed in 2003.

He had complained to the Prime Minister's Office about rampant corruption and poor implementation of the PM's pet project, the Golden Quadrilateral road project.

However, things haven't changed much after his death.

It is not the turn of the The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna or the Prime Minister's Rural Roads Programme to run into several roadblocks.

Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh's constituency, Bihar's Vaishali district, has a road which is almost not a road - for its completely non-existent.

Interestingly, it is Yadav's ministry that is handling the The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna.

The condition of this road is no different from roads being built across the country under this project for the last six years.

This is because more than Rs 300 crore sanctioned for the project have been siphoned off to unauthorized accounts or shown as payments to contractors; payments that should never have been made, according to a report published in the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) last week.

Of the missing Rs 300 crore, a whopping Rs 113 crore have been diverted in Andhra Pradesh and Assam, with Rs 83 crore unaccounted for.

Additional Deputy of CAG, Utpal Bhattacharya, said, “The project was to be completed in seven years, connecting 1,40000 habitations.

“Nearly six years down the line, only 25 per cent has been completed and even in places where the roads have been built, specifications were not followed,” he said.

Many roads have been made only on paper, which has forced the CAG to call for urgent intervention by the government.

Minister for Rural Development, Raghuvansh Prasad Yadav promises prompt action, but fails to explain why nothing has been done for the last six years.

For Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his two-year-old UPA government, the road to glory might have been penned on a report card which suggests that India is Shining all over again, but in the key area of infrastructure, there are many potholes.

Last week’s CAG report suggests that if the feel good factor in the Indian economy has to be maintained then the government needs to do something about developing infrastructure for the next three years, especially building roads, because roads are ultimately the bridges to economic prosperity.

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