Centre sitting on funds, 36,000-km rural roads in Punjab cry for attention

There are scores of such roads, managed by the Punjab Mandi Board, which were washed away during floods and got damaged in the previous years. But there is no money for repair as the Centre has not released Rs 6,767 crore towards Rural Development Fund (RDF) and Mandi Development Fund (MDF). These funds go into maintenance and repair of agriculture infrastructure.

The Punjab State Agricultural Marketing Board, also known as Mandi Board, the managing authority of these funds, is responsible for maintenance of 66,000 kms of village roads in the state that connect the villages with mandi infrastructure.

However, for the last three years, about 36,000 km of rural road network is in need of repairs but the government cannot do anything as there are no funds.

“The Mandi Board has a mandate of repairing 12,000 km roads every year. The maintenance and repair then becomes cyclic for 66,000 km roads. Each stretch of 12,000 km roads is repaired after every fifth year. This keeps the entire maintenance operations going. But with the state government not getting RDF for three years now, no repair and maintenance work has been undertaken. The situation is bad after last year’s floods. However, our coffers are empty. We cannot do anything,” said an official.

The Centre has not been paying RDF to the state for the last six procurement seasons. The state charges 3 per cent each of RDF and MDF (Mandi Development Fund) on Centre for carrying out procurement operations of wheat and rice for Government of India for PDS. The Centre has been writing letters to the state saying that it would only pay these taxes at the rate of 1 per cent each. The state is not agreeing to the proposal.

Punjab had filed a suit in the Supreme Court in July last year. The department of food and civil supplies had stated that the Centre’s refusal of payment of statutory charges and insistence on capping the statutory charges to a total of 2 per cent of the MSP is an outright transgression of state’s exclusive legislative powers under the Constitution, which empowers it to determine the rate of fees to be levied in respect of agriculture and market.
Sources said that the RDF was pledged by former Congress government led by Amarinder Singh, when it had taken a loan of Rs 4,500 crore to waive off the debt of farmers.

The government has cleared all the debt and now it owes only Rs 330 crore to the bank. It is paying at the rate of Rs 50 crore every month. After cleaning the rest of the amount, the Mandi Board would not have any debt. At the same time, it would have no money to repair the roads.

Sources said that the state government was looking at a middle path. The government was given an offer by the Centre to accept RDF and MDF at 2 per cent each on the lines of Haryana. The government has prepared a case on that account. “If all goes well, then we may accept the offer. Before that, we would have to withdraw the suit,” said a functionary.

RDF has always been a point of confrontation between the Centre and state. During former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal’s government, the RDF was used for the CM’s grants during his Sangat Darshan programmes. Former Union finance minister Arun Jaitley had then written a letter to the state asking the government to route the RDF through the consolidated fund.

Later, during former CM Amarinder Singh’s government, the RDF was pledged to generate funds for state to waive debt of farmers. The Centre had objected to it and asked the state government to bring legislation that barred the state from using the RDF for populous schemes. However, even after bringing the legislation, the RDF has been withheld.