New Delhi: The government`s 25 ministries and department spent Rs 35,800.60 crore last fiscal under Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) Sub-Plan, which is meant for welfare of these communities, Parliament was informed on Thursday.
However, the government had allocated Rs 41,561.13 crore under the SC/ST Sub-Plan for the central ministries for 2013-14, Planning Minister Rao Inderjit Singh said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.
According to Singh, certain schemes to provide universal coverage for example, village electrification, benefit all poor households including SC/ST families and bifurcation of allocation made on the basis of caste and gender is not possible under such programmes.
"Therefore, for schemes which have universal coverage, ministries are finding it difficult to fully utilise funds earmarked under SC/ST Sub-Plan," the minister said.
He said this in reply to a query on the amount that has been actually utilised during the last three years under the SC/ST sub-plan and the reason for non-utilisation of entire allocated funds.
He further stated that the remaining ministries are not allocating funds for SC/ST Sub-Plan as they are covered under the exempted category as per the recommendation of a task force constituted by the Planning Commission.
In 2012-13, the central ministries and departments utilised Rs 28,218.81 crore against the allocation of Rs 37,113.03 crore for the purpose.
Similarly, an amount of Rs 31,555.66 crore was allocated for 2011-12 whereas Rs 29,940.78 was spent by the central ministries and departments in this regard, the House was told.
