Is government funding properly recorded and accounted for?
8 Nov, 2012An application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act sought the details of all the lift irrigation projects undertaken by the Zila parishad of the tribal district of Gadchiroli, Maharashtra during the period from 2000 to 2010. The department could provide information only till 2007 showing lack of proper record keeping.
Whatever replies were received revealed that around 45 lift irrigation projects started during the period are still incomplete despite the fact that substantial amount of money has been spent on them. Due to this most of the tribal peasants have to hire costly pumps and pipes to water their fields. For example, a lift irrigation project launched in Maregaon village was stalled due to lack of electricity connection after spending Rs18.67 lakh. The lift irrigation project at Wadegaon village in was started, but was left incomplete, despite Rs 5.05 lakh expenditure due to faulty structure. Similarly the RTI reply showed that two such irrigation projects were started in 2001 at Yerkad and Sawargaon, but both of them were dysfunctional in 2009 though a total of Rs. 31.54 lakh were spent on the two