Congress president Sonia Gandhi today took strong exception to the alleged rejection of over 16,000 applications for job cards under the rural job guarantee scheme NREGS in her Lok Sabha constituency and asked the district magistrate to inquire into the complaints.
The directive was given at a three-hour meeting of the district monitoring and vigilance committee chaired by Gandhi in her capacity as the local MP.
"The Congress president reviewed in detail each and every centrally-sponsored scheme," MLA from Satawan, Shiv Ganesh
Lodhi said.
"Gandhi asked the district magistrate to inquire into complaints pertaining to poor quality of roads constructed under schemes like Central Road Fund and the prime minister Rural Road Scheme," he said.
During the meeting the members lodged a complaint that applications of up to 16,000 candidates for job cards under
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme were rejected by the authorities.
"Taking a serious note of the complaint, Gandhi, the local MP, asked the District Magistrate to look how and why applications of so many people were turned down," Lodhi said.
He said Gandhi also directed the officials to prepare schemes for blocks where funds were available under MNREGS.
"She asked the district authorities to electrify villages still not covered under Rajiv Gandhi Rural Electrification Programme," he said.
"There were certain complaints that quality of roads constructed under PMRRS was poor and the work was not up to the mark," district magistrate Charanjeet Bakshi told reporters later.
He said the administration would look into the complaints and appropriate action would be taken. "It has come to the fore that at some places roads were getting damaged due to heavy traffic load. We have sent a letter to the government requesting it to increase the construction cost.
"As far as complaints relating to quality are concerned, I will conduct a spot inspection and action will be taken if shortcomings are detected," he said.
He also said that Gandhi expressed surprise over how and why forms of about 16,000 applicants for job cards under MGNREGS were rejected.
"We will look into this and random survey of blocks will be done to ascertain on what grounds the applications were turned down," he said.
