Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday advised against a suggestion made by a Congress delegation to incorporate his and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s photograph in the logo of the government’s flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREG), to highlight the party’s role in the programme. The delegation was led by Rahul Gandhi.In the backdrop of oft-pronounced concerns within the ruling party about Opposition-ruled states usurping credit for the programme, the delegation of young Congress MPs met the PM on Friday to apprise him of their concerns. Apart from Rahul, the delegation included Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasada, Deepender Hooda and Sandeep Dikshit.According to sources, the young MPs pointed out that chief ministers of Opposition-ruled states were using their pictures in official publicity documents of the scheme in their respective states. One of the MPs reportedly told him that they should either put the photographs of Sonia and Manmohan or make provisions for some punitive clauses to deter them from misusing the Central scheme for their own political interests. However, the PM disapproved of the idea citing federal nature of governance, said sources. Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh intervened to drive home the point that the Government should not try to propagate party work through its scheme. Instead, party workers should start taking interest in Government schemes, which would automatically result in public awareness about a party’s role in the scheme.During the meeting, officials from the rural development ministry made a presentation regarding the performance of the NREG scheme. They informed that the Government will move a proposal in the Cabinet by next month to enhance the administrative expenditure from 4 to 6 per cent, as suggested by the young Congress MPs in their previous meeting with the PM, ahead of the Budget.To another demand by the MPs to link the fund release to states with grievance redressal, the officials said that a high-level group, which was set up to review the Act, will submit its recommendations by June 2008.To Rahul Gandhi’s demand to strengthen the MIS operationalisation, the officials informed that the Government has taken a four-fold strategy to expedite the process on computers, personnel, training and connectivity front.With Rahul Gandhi having already outlined the need for correction of the “deficiencies” in monitoring and implementation of the “revolutionary” scheme, this was his third meeting with the PM on this issue since he took over as AICC general secretary last year.
