Delhi Govt achieves targets in education, infra and transport projects go slow

The outcome budget released by the AAP government Friday shows it has fared well in the education and health sectors but lagged behind in projects such as providing WiFi in public places, building new roads, procuring public buses, cleaning the Yamuna and installing water pipelines in unauthorised colonies among others.

While launching the outcome budget — the third such report launched by the AAP government — Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who also holds the finance portfolio, said, “The outcome budget has helped in removing bottlenecks to improve delivery of services to residents of Delhi.”

The report – which used over 3,000 indicators for evaluation — tracks performance of 567 schemes.

With it being the last year of the AAP government’s tenure, the city administration will have only a little over seven months to complete its pending projects. The Delhi assembly election is scheduled for early next year.

The report shows that of the 39 projects of the PWD, around 20 projects, including flagship infrastructure projects such as ‘free WiFi’ and installation of CCTVs, are ‘off-track’.

The parameter ‘off-track’ means that progress on such projects was less than 70%. In the WiFi project, a key poll promise of the AAP, the department has failed to set up any hostspot on pilot basis in 2018-19.

The government has now decided to set up 10 hotspots in 2019-20. The ‘off-track’ construction projects include the Barapullah-3, East-West elevated corridor, North-South elevated corridor, a new corridor along Yamuna between Signature Bridge and Delhi Noida Direct flyway, Ashram flyover extension and an underpass at the Ashram crossing.

The timeline to rollout 1,000 electric buses, 1,000 cluster buses and 1,000 low-floor buses have been revised, meaning that the procurement plan has been delayed by almost a year. The report states Delhi government’s flagship announcement of giving 50% concession in registration charges for CNG factory-fitted private cars is yet to take off.

While electric buses will start rolling out from March, 2020, about 25-30 buses under the cluster scheme are will arrive in the city by next month.

At present, Delhi has 5,521 buses against the requirement of 11,000 buses. The government has also been unsuccessful in building new bus queue shelters as its fourth tender failed. The project to install CCTV cameras in buses has also not been extended to all buses and is currently fitted only in 200 buses.

While the government achieved most of its targets in education, it failed to meet the desired target of admitting economically weaker section students in private schools as per the Right to Education Act.

Over 32,000 students got admitted to private schools under the Right To Education Act as against the target of 45,149. For 2019-20, the government has set a target of getting 45,859 EWS students admitted to private schools. Even for the current academic session, the EWS seats are not yet filled and the directorate will conduct a fourth computerised draw of lots on June 11.

After having finished construction of 8,095 classrooms in 2018-19, the Delhi government achieved 100% outcome in the area.

Around 95% seats were filled in nursery classes in 2018-19, exceeding the target of 90%.

The report also stated that the target of achieving a pupil-teacher ratio of 30:1 was achieved.

According to the outcome budget released in February, the government targeted to set up 339 mohalla clinics — theAAP government’s flagship project — in 2019-20. The government had planned to set up 250 to 300 clinics by May this year. But, only 191 have been set up against the initial promise of 1,000.

The Delhi government has also set a target to increase its essential drug list. The list was expanded in 2016. In 2017, the list had 920 medicines, which went down to 816 in 2018. The target set for 2019-20 is 1,065.

The Delhi Jal Board has not been able to meet the target of installing 5,300km of new water pipeline in unauthorised colonies in 2018-19. The water utility could install only 4,413 km of pipeline in unauthorised colonies.

There are a total of 1,665 unauthorised colonies in Delhi. People living there are believed to be the core vote bank of the AAP. The document said that while 95 colonies do not have NOC, work was not feasible in at least 36 colonies.

The DJB had set a target of laying water pipelines in another 291 unauthorised colonies in 2018-19. It, however, could complete the work in only 144 such localities. In slum clusters, the DJB had set a target to install 89 km of water pipelines but could lay only around 36 km of pipeline.

There has been no improvement in pollution levels in the River Yamuna over the past two years. The report says nine of every 10 water samples collected from across nine locations along the river’s stretch have failed the quality test — both in 2017-18 and in 2018-19. The environment department had collected 108 samples from nine locations, of which 90% of the samples failed the quality test.

Same goes with the drains in Delhi that empty into the river.

Besides, 20% of the samples collected from the 13 CETPs and 15% of the samples collected from STPs did not meet the prescribed standards during 2018-19.

The outcome budget says no data is available on what per cent of the land area has been made kikar-free — either in 2017-18 or in 2018-19. Sisodia had announced in the 2018 budget speech that Rs50 lakh has been set aside to eradicate kikar.