Constituency Development Fund for MLA, MLC realeased

Consequent to the doubling of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) from Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 3 crore from the 2016-17 financial year, the State government on Thursday released its second instalment of Rs 210 crore to facilitate development of 140 constituencies including 120 MLA and 20 MLC constituencies.

According to the GO issued by the Planning Department, Rs 1.5 crore per MLA/MLC constituency was released earlier and another Rs 1.5 crore was released on Thursday. This amount can be utilised by the public representatives for any developmental work in their constituencies such as construction of school buildings, road works, installation of CCTVs and other developmental activities, and the funds would be released by the Collectors of respective districts.

However, from this year, the government has done away with the in-charge minister



system for release of funds under CDF. After formation of 21 new districts from the erstwhile 10 districts in the State, some MLA constituencies are spread over two to three districts.

This led to some confusion among the elected representatives over utilisation of CDF, but guidelines have now been issued to overcome this problem. In such cases, the district collector should consult his counterpart in other districts to check left-over CDF amount of public representatives and give sanctions accordingly.

In view of the model code of conduct, the Planning Department has directed district collectors of Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy, Vikarabad, Medchal-Malkajgiri, Mahbubnagar, Nagarkurnool, Wanaparthy and Jogulamba-Gadwal not to sanction new works under CDF till the model code of conduct for Council election was lifted.