Ministers ignore PM instructions
BJP president Nitin Gadkari (right) hugs Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi during the wedding reception of his son Nikhil .
A number of Union ministers too have ignored instructions issued by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Early this year the Prime Minister had asked the Planning Commission to prepare quarterly performance report of the infrastructure sector — railways, roads, ports, power and telecommunication — in consultation with the concerned ministries and bring them to the cabinet for their reviews.
Taking initiatives on the instructions issued by the Prime Minister, the plan panel had launched a website to showcase the performance in the infrastructure and sought cooperation from the concerned ministries. But two quarters have lapsed since then and nothing has moved on this count. Sources in the Planning Commission has blamed the concerned ministries for not providing quarterly figures and thus reports could not be prepared to be taken to the Cabinet for their perusal.
While launching the website in May this year deputy chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia had said the Prime Minister wanted to give a big push to the infrastructure sector and so he had instructed “us to prepare a quarterly review report”.
Then Dr Ahluwalia had said, “This has never happened before. This is not a punitive move. The targets have been set after consultation with the ministries concerned. There is a possibility that in one quarter there could be a slippage from what is being targeted, but we hope that this will be made up in the some other quarter. We hope that through this the country will be able to achieve a higher growth.”
Accordingly targets for sectors like roads and power were set.
For converting single-lane national highways to two-lane ones, the target in the first quarter was 251 km, in the second quarter ending September was 340 km, in the third quarter ending December 640 km and for the fourth quarter 1,100 km.
But for the first two quarters there is no achievement figure available with the Planning Commission as data was not made available to it.
Similarly, in the power sector for capacity addition quarterly targets were fixed — 0 MW, 2,115MW and 3,454 MW, respectively, in the central pool.
But it seems that the government is at loss on the actual achievement in the sector, as figures are not available.
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