Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today said her government will utilise funds from the Centre soon after the state administration receives them.
Her remarks comes close on the heels of a parliamentary committee informing the Rajya Sabha that only 22 per cent of the Prime Minister's Rs 80,000 crore development package for Jammu and Kashmir had been released so far.
Replying to a question on the funds, she said, "The funds will be released by the Centre. The sooner they do it, the earlier we will utilise them."
She was speaking here on the sidelines of an interaction session with a group of Kashmiri Pandits.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, headed by senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, in a report tabled in the Rajya Sabha recently, had said the progress on implementing the PM's development package had been slow and a "poor outcome" had been achieved in the past 12 months.
The committee found that out of the Rs 80,068-crore Prime Minister's Development Package for Jammu and Kashmir, "projects of Rs 67,046 crore have been sanctioned and Rs 17,913 crore have been released to the state government", according to the report.
The committee noted that most of the projects - including that for creation of jobs, transit accommodations, one-time settlement of 36,384 families from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Chhamb displaced persons, and raising of India Reserve Battalions - were still under progress and "little outcome was achieved".
"Observing this pattern of poor outcome in the past twelve months, the committee recommends that the Ministry of Home Affairs should intensify its efforts to achieve measurable outcome under the PM's Development Package by speeding up the work in the upcoming fiscal and implement all the projects at the earliest," the panel had said in its report.
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