New Delhi, India: A huge amount of Rs.550 million released by the Centre for Kupwara for pleasing sarpanches (heads of Panchaits) has been pilfered out and only Rs.100 million reached to sarpanches out of the total amount of Rs.650 million officially released.
The rest of the amount has allegedly been siphoned off by the government functionaries
According to information reaching out of Kupwara, Rs 650 million had been sanctioned by the centre under the mid-day meal scheme. This scheme is for providing lunch/food to poor people of Kupwara through village heads/sarpanches and heads of schools.
The political philosophy behind the schemes was to please local leadership to buy their support against freedom fighters and for providing information to police and intelligence agencies about activities of youth involved in freedom fighting. However, the scheme has backfired as the heads of villages claim that they got even not 20 percent of the amount receipts they had signed.
The majority of sarpanches claim that functionaries of Collector Office and Revenue departments have eaten out the money in the same way they made money from the Jammu and Kashmir Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation (JKIDFC) projects.
They further claim that 2,273 projects worth Rs. 5,979 crores had been sanctioned on record but only 506 projects had been initiated but 2,340 projects have completed but only in papers.
Sarpanches further claim that payments for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA scheme have been released in documents but no money came to them in reality.
