One wonders if the  UPA government would be able to mobilise funds to the tune of Rs 50,000 crore in the remaining 20 months of its five-year term.

But the Manmohan Singh government is on the verge of announcing a mega plan which would entail expenditure of Rs 50,000 crore under its Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyuteekaran Yojana (RGGVY) over the remaining period of its term in office.

The Union power ministry is understood to have almost finalised the plan under RGGVY, aimed at expansion of rural electricity infrastructure and free electrification of unelectrified below poverty line (BPL) rural households across the country.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is learnt to have already considered a note submitted by the ministry recently. It wanted the ministry to elaborate on certain aspects of the proposal expeditiously before announcing it. 

There are indications that the ministry is almost ready with its revised proposal for approval by the CCEA and subsequently by the Union Cabinet. The CCEA and the Cabinet skipped their weekly meetings this week as the prime minister was indisposed.

Those in the know about the proposal are highly pessimistic about the Centre’s ability to mobilise Rs. 50,000 crore or even the ability to spend the amount in less than two years. These questions have prompted many to suggest that proposed mega spending announcement may be part of UPA’s crash preparations for a snap poll contingency by seeking to highlight its “aam aadmi” orientation.

Sources suggested that the proposal had its origin in the prime minister’s office.

 Top officials from the P MO had apparently summoned power ministry officials for discussions several times in the recent past in connection with activating the RGGVY, a four-year programme announced by the UPA in April 2005, as part of the larger Bharat Nirman programme.

In order to meet the planned spending target during the remaining 20 months of the four-year RGGVY programme, the UPA government would have to spend 10 times the amount it has spent on it during the first two years since April 2005. In the first year, 2005-06, Finance Minister P Chidambaram had allocated just Rs 2200 crore and in the last fiscal year (2006-07), he had allocated Rs 3000 crore.

Curiously, in his budget proposals for 2007-08, the finance minister has allocated Rs 3983 crore for RGGVY.  Unless this figure is steeply revised, he would have to allocate over Rs 46,000 crore in the next and last budget of the UPA government, if the programme has to take off.   
   
Since the launch of RGGVY, the progress on meeting the target has been understandably very tardy, due to the inadequate matching budgetary allocations. The ministry’s official figures have claimed that 30 per cent of the 1.24 lakh unelectrified villages have been covered under the scheme for  electrification of BPL households.

State governments have blamed lack of funds for slow implementation of the scheme. In terms of the number of BPL families covered, the situation is worse. Only 16 lakh rural households have been covered as against the 7.8 crore households identified for benefiting from the scheme.