Less than half the money allocated under the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) over the last three financial years and the current one has been disbursed to vendors, the government told the Parliament on Monday.
Out of the ₹18,900 crore allocated across 36 states and union territories, ₹9,242.71 crore or 48.9% had been disbursed as on August 5. The data was given by MoS (IC) for Statistics and Programme Implementation Rao Inderjit Singh in a written reply to a question.
According to the data shared, the MPs recommended 2,45,454 works worth ₹14,276.50 crore during the period. District authorities sanctioned 2,09,414 of them, worth ₹11,932.83 crore. That leaves 36,040 recommended works valued at ₹2,343.67 crore that did not clear the sanction stage.
Of the works that were sanctioned, 1,00,664 have been completed and 1,08,750 are still under progress. By number, 48.1% of sanctioned works are finished; by value, the completion rate is 42.7%, with ₹6,834.05 crore of sanctioned work still in the pipeline.
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Two jurisdictions at a standstill
The Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu are the only jurisdictions that showed no activity beyond the recommendation stage, the data showed. Against an allocation of ₹39.21 crore, 60 works worth ₹25.25 crore were recommended and none was sanctioned.
Ladakh reported 144 sanctioned works and no completions. Of its ₹27.16 crore allocation, ₹1.41 crore, or 5.2%, has been disbursed.
Among the larger states, Assam has the weakest completion record. It sanctioned 3,993 works, of which 587 are complete (14.7%) while 3,406 remain in progress. Jharkhand (21.9% of sanctioned works completed) and Himachal Pradesh (23.5%) follow.
Measured by absolute money not yet disbursed, Maharashtra tops the list at ₹979.6 crore, followed by Uttar Pradesh (₹955.1 crore), West Bengal (₹775.3 crore), Bihar (₹622.9 crore) and Tamil Nadu (₹568.5 crore). Kerala has disbursed 36.6% of its allocation, Odisha 37.2%, Haryana 38.5% and Telangana 39.2%.
Nagaland leads on both counts, having disbursed 89.8% of its allocation and completed 82.1% of sanctioned works. Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Mizoram also record high disbursement. Among the large states, Bihar is the strongest performer, with 78.9% of sanctioned works completed, followed by Uttar Pradesh at 58.8%.
Disbursement runs ahead of completion in every state, indicating part-payments on unfinished works. Nationally, ₹9,242.71 crore has gone to vendors against ₹5,098.81 crore worth of completed assets — a gap of ₹4,143.90 crore.
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What the reply does not say
The question sought details of funds allocated, released and utilised, including unspent balances. The annexure gave allocation and amount disbursed to vendors. It carried no column for funds released or for unspent balances.
The data was aggregated across the four-year window with no year-wise break-up, so the current financial year cannot be isolated. The 17th Lok Sabha ended in June 2024, meaning a new set of MPs began recommending works partway through the period; some works are recent and the reply does not allow recently sanctioned projects to be separated from delayed ones.
In every state, the number of works completed plus works under progress equals the number sanctioned exactly. The government’s response does not carry any category for sanctioned works subsequently cancelled or abandoned.
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