India News | BJP MLA Vijender Gupta Asks Delhi CM to Resume MLALAD Fund

New Delhi, Sep 21 (PTI) Delhi BJP MLA Vijender Gupta on Monday wrote to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and urged him to resume the MLA Local Area Development fund, saying its suspension is hampering development works.

Under the MLALAD fund scheme, each MLA in the 70-member Delhi Assembly is provided Rs 10 crore per annum to spend on development works in their constituency.

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He said residents in every assembly constituency are waiting for improvement in parks, street lights, bad roads in their colonies and societies and common civic amenities such as water supply, sewerage, health-related services like open gyms, senior citizen recreation centres among others are hit due to suspension of the fund, he said.

Satyendar Jain, who is incharge of the Urban Development department that receives proposals under MLALAD scheme, had said in the special assembly session last week that Delhi government has suspended the fund due to issues related with state finances.

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Gupta appealed to Kejriwal to immediately release Rs 700 crores to be spent from the MLALAD fund.

"Till the time Delhi government takes a decision on resuming the scheme, it should direct the concerned department to atleast receive the proposals under this scheme from the MLAs so that no further delay is there in starting the work," Gupta said in his letter.

He claimed that not a single penny has been released under the scheme so far nor any development proposals have been accepted by the concerned department under this head. 

Gupta said he had also raised this issue in the special session of Delhi Legislative Assembly held on September 14, but neither the concerned minister nor the chief minister gave any "satisfactory" reply. 

No immediate reaction was available from the Delhi government on the issue.

Earlier this month, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had said the government was likely to have a revenue shortfall of Rs 21,000 crore by the end of the current financial year due to COVID-19-hit economy of the city.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)