KGBV scheme implementation unsatisfactory:Parliamentary panel

New Delhi, Mar 5 (UNI) A Parliamentary panel has expressed its dissatisfaction with the progress of the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya scheme.

Asom, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have been found to be most lax in implementing the scheme, said the Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development in its 187th report tabled in Parliament.

The KGBV scheme had been launched in August 2004 for setting up initially 750 residential schools at upper primary level for girls belonging mainly to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes and minorities in Educationally Backward Blocks (EBSs) where the female litercay was below national average.

Noting that only about half (663) of the total 1180 schools sanctioned under the programme had become functional so far, the panel has stressed the need of properly sensitising the defaulting states.

The Committee has asked the department of school education to ensure that due measures were taken to make all KGVB functional in a fixed time frame.

It also found that the money allocated for the scheme had been underutilised. Only a dismal percentage (29.37) of expenditure had been incurred up to March 2006.

The committee said the fund utilisation position seemd to be satisfactory in the first year of the scheme. However, in the very next year, only Rs 27.93 crore as against a provision of Rs 225.00 crore had been spent.

UNI