Ministries may now have to give reasons for delay in the scheme

For infrastructure projects, if the cost exceeds 15 per cent of the original estimate, ministries and departments will have to explain the reasons for delay in completion of the project.

The government is currently working towards formulating various rules to make this practice mandatory. This exercise has been initiated to make ministries and departments more accountable for planning through rigorous cost monitoring to ensure that projects are executed efficiently without unnecessary cost overruns.

Out of 1,873 infrastructure projects, 449 projects suffer from backlog. This increase in cost is up to Rs 5.01 lakh crore. The Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation said that at least 779 schemes were found to be delayed till March 2024. The project cost of these infrastructure schemes is more than Rs 150 crore. The average time of delay of 779 schemes was 36.04 months.

The government needs to tighten monitoring on whether the projects are being completed on time or not, so that the projects are completed on time and there is no delay in them. In recent times, there has been an increase in the number of requests from the ministries to the government to increase funds for the schemes. For which the ministries have not presented concrete reasons for the delay in the scheme and it is also not told when the scheme will actually be completed. Such delays in the schemes need to be avoided now, because in the last two budgets, there was an additional burden of about Rs 50,000 crore due to the delay in the schemes. A full stop on which is inevitable.