AHMEDABAD: Gujarat has 7,112 development works sanctioned under the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) still under progress, with only 50.7% of the total sanctioned value translated into completed works, according to the latest official data placed before the Rajya Sabha on August 10.
According to the Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation's state wise data, Gujarat received an MPLADS allocation of ₹864.90 crore for the last three years and the current financial year.
Against this, MPs recommended 17,748 works involving ₹660.46 crore. District authorities sanctioned 15,984 works worth ₹573.81 crore, but only 8,872 works worth ₹291.18 crore have been completed. Another 7,112 works involving ₹282.64 crore are still under progress.
Of the 15,984 sanctioned projects, only 8,872, or 55.5%, have been completed by number. Measured by financial value, the performance is even lower, with completed works accounting for just ₹291.18 crore, or 50.7%, of the ₹573.81 crore sanctioned amount.
This leaves almost half of the sanctioned project value tied up in works that have not yet been completed.
Gujarat has 7,112 works worth ₹282.64 crore under progress, equivalent to almost half of the value of all sanctioned works. The under progress amount is also almost equal to the ₹291.18 crore value of completed works.
In effect, for every ₹100 worth of MPLADS works sanctioned in Gujarat, only about ₹51 worth has been completed, while nearly ₹49 remains under progress.
The project count picture is similar. Out of every 100 sanctioned works, roughly 56 have been completed and 44 remain under progress.
The data also shows that the bottleneck does not appear to be entirely at the recommendation stage.
Gujarat MPs recommended 17,748 works worth ₹660.46 crore, of which 15,984 works were sanctioned. That means about 90% of recommended projects by number moved through to sanction.
But once projects crossed the sanction stage, the completion rate dropped to 55.5% by number.
This creates a clear two stage implementation gap: the system is relatively successful in converting recommendations into sanctions, but significantly less successful in converting sanctions into completed public assets.
The scale becomes clearer when Gujarat is compared with the other states in the same Union government annexure.
Across the 36 listed states and Union Territories, the total allocation works out to about ₹18,900.15 crore. Gujarat's ₹864.90 crore accounts for roughly 4.6% of the total allocation.
In terms of allocation, Gujarat stands ninth among the states and Union Territories listed.
However, Gujarat's position improves considerably when actual completed works are considered. The state recorded 8,872 completed works, putting it among the leading performers in absolute project numbers. By the value of completed works, Gujarat's ₹291.18 crore ranks sixth in the annexure.
That creates an important distinction: Gujarat is not a low volume MPLADS state. Its problem is the unfinished pipeline rather than a lack of sanctioned projects.
The annexure also records ₹379.32 crore disbursed to vendors in Gujarat. This is substantially higher than the ₹291.18 crore value attributed to completed works.
The figures should not be treated as contradictory because vendor disbursements can relate to payments against works at different stages of execution; the annexure does not provide a project wise breakup of these payments.
The data therefore points to considerable financial activity around MPLADS projects even while a large number of sanctioned works remain incomplete.
The Union government's reply provides an important explanation for why sanctioned works can remain unfinished.
Under the MPLADS Guidelines, district authorities are required to sanction or reject a recommended work within 45 days of receiving the recommendation. Once sanctioned, the work should generally be completed within one year, except in specified exceptional circumstances.
But the government acknowledges that delays can occur because of incomplete proposals, local disputes, land availability and site feasibility issues, statutory and regulatory clearances, and other technical or administrative constraints at the district level.
The responsibility for scrutiny, sanctions and execution rests with the implementing district authorities.
That official explanation becomes significant against Gujarat's numbers, where 7,112 sanctioned projects are still under progress.
At the national level, however, the Union government's third party physical evaluation presents a broadly positive picture of completed MPLADS assets.
The government's Third Party Physical Evaluation covered MPLADS works completed between April 1, 2019 and March 31, 2024 across 504 nodal districts. It found 100% of sampled assets at the time of field evaluation, with 94.56% found functional and 82.27% properly maintained.
The evaluation also found that 87.24% of recommended projects were sanctioned within prescribed timelines, while 86.72% of works were completed within the prescribed 365 day period.
At the community level, 77.04% of respondents said the projects contributed to overall community development, while 95.82% reported that the MPLAD Scheme increased their trust in governance and public authorities.
The Gujarat data, therefore, throws up a sharper state level question: if completed MPLADS assets nationally show high functionality and timely execution in the third party evaluation, why does Gujarat still have more than 7,000 sanctioned works in the under-progress column?
The latest MPLADS numbers do not point to a failure to generate projects. Instead, they expose an execution bottleneck.
Gujarat MPs have recommended nearly 18,000 works, district authorities have sanctioned almost 16,000, and thousands of projects have already been completed. But the state is simultaneously carrying a backlog of 7,112 sanctioned works worth ₹282.64 crore.
The most striking figure is the completion conversion: only about one in every two rupees sanctioned has translated into a completed work.
For Gujarat, therefore, the next challenge under MPLADS is not merely identifying or recommending local development projects. It is closing the gap between sanction and completion, clearing administrative and land related hurdles, and ensuring that sanctioned public money turns into functioning public assets on the ground.
