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Journalism of Courage
The National Development Council’s (NDC) sub-committee on Centrally-Sponsored Schemes (CSS) will meet on Wednesday to take decide on the number of schemes to be abolished and merged during the 10th Plan period.
Since it would be the last meeting of the sub-committee before the NDC meeting to approve the 10th Plan, sources said the Wednesday meeting would take crucial decisions on the schemes to be given up and the ones to be retained.
The sub-committee, headed by Planning Commission deputy chairman K.C. Pant, includes Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, Human Resource Development Minister M.M. Joshi, Agriculture Minister Ajit Singh and Food and Public Distribution Minister Sharad Yadav. Chief Ministers of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are also members.
There are about 200 CSSs, a large number of which have similar objectives targeting the same population while some are not yielding any result. The Planning Commission, in its approach paper to the 10th Plan, had called for merging similar schemes and weeding out of the unproductive ones.
The sub-committee was formulated to identify schemes to be abolished and converged. It had come up with a tentative list of such schemes some time back. The sub-committee is expected to submit its final list this Wednesday.
In the approach paper, the Planning Commission had pointed out that the share of the CSSs in the Plan budget of Central ministries had increased to 70 per cent against 30 per cent during the early 1980s. The expansion had taken place at the expense of investments in infrastructure, industry and energy sectors. The Plan panel had further noted that no ministry should be allowed to run more than three-four CSSs having an outlay of not more than Rs 100 crore a year.
