The Supreme Court Tuesday issued notice to Bihar government on a petition challenging its decision to frame different guidelines for implementing the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS).
A bench of Justice D.K. Jain and Justice Anil R. Dave issued notice on a public suit by Jai Narayan Prasad Nishad, a Lok Sabha MP of Nitish Kumar’s own Janata Dal-United, contending that the state government had no jurisdiction to frame guidelines for implementation of the MPLADS which was being financed by the central government.
Nishad, the MP from Muzaffarpur, was represented by his counsel P.C. Srivastava. Notice was also issued to the central government through the statistics and programme implementation ministry, which is the nodal ministry for implementing the scheme.
Nishad has contended that the state government could not deviate from the Central guidelines for the implementation of MPLADS. Under the schemestarted in 1993, each MP gets Rs.5 crore that he can use it for the development works in his constituency.
Framed on Nov 10, 2011, the Bihar government guidelines govern the procedure for the selection of the plans, allocation of funds and the executing agencies of the work under MPLADS.
Seeking the setting aside of guidelines of the Bihar government as it had no powers and authority to do so under the MPLADS, Nishad said: “Due to the framing of the new guidelines the progress of implementation of the MPLADS for the year 2011-2012 is very poor in the State of Bihar, and till December, minimal amount had been spent….”
