Grants for poor, none to issue them

It took more than a year for the state government to order the reconstitution of the district committee to sanction the monthly monetary grants under the Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar Yojana. It issued a special government regulation (GR) last month for the formation of the committee.

However, the panel is yet to meet for the first time.

The urban poor are given a monthly grant of Rs600 from the district collector’s office under this state government’s scheme. The district guardian minister, Ajit Pawar, had formed the panel responsible for sanctioning the grant with a tehsildar as the secretary.

There are 6,000 beneficiaries under this scheme in Pune city covering a population that has incomes ranging between Rs10,000 and Rs36,000.

As per the state government directives, the committee sits once in three months to scrutinise applications and permit or deny grant. The last panel was dissolved along with the state assembly in 2009.

After the formation of the present government, the district collector had reminded the guardian minister to constitute a committee to sanction grants. Tehsildar incharge of the yojana, Nilprasad Chavan, said the district collector has sent seven letters asking for reconstituting the committee in the past 18 months. More than 1,000 applications are pending before the scheme’s tehsildar incharge.

To deal with the burgeoning load of applications, Pune sub-divisional officer, Jaishree Katare, formed an ad hoc committee in October, 2010, and cleared more than 600 applications in its first meeting.