Targets lowered, 2019 deadline set for many flagship projects

Many of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government’s flagship projects, including free Wi-Fi across the city and setting up 1,000 Mohalla Clinics, have either had their deadlines set to 2019 or the target reduced for this year, according to the government’s Outcome Budget for 2018-19.

The Outcome Budget, which was put in the public domain through the Planning Department’s website last week, includes detailed project-wise targets and status updates of the Delhi government’s initiatives.

One of the AAP’s main promises before coming to power in February 2015 was free WiFi all over Delhi. This project, the Outcome Budget says, would be completed by March 31, 2019, in the last full year for the government before polls in 2020.

The Outcome Budget showed that the Transport Department had lagged behind in several key parameters, including the operation of buses under the cluster scheme as well as matters related to the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC).

The government had set the target for functional cluster buses at 2,436 for 2017-18, but was able to achieve 1,758. This was 58 buses more than in 2016-17 when there were 1,700 cluster buses.

For 2018-19, the government increased the target to 2,758 buses.

Meanwhile, the daily ridership of low-floor DTC buses registered a dip, going from 32 lakh in 2016-17 to 31.03 lakh in 2017-18.

When it came to CCTV cameras in DTC and cluster buses, the status remained the same — 200 buses had cameras in 2016-17 and in 2017-18 as well. The targets for 2017-18 and 2018-19 remained 6,350 - the total fleet.

In addition, and despite recent reservations expressed by the Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority, the government’s proposed timeline for the creation of a fleet of electric buses remained the same.

The supply of e-buses by the manufacturers, the Budget said, would begin from March 31, 2019, onwards.

The target for the government’s flagship primary healthcare initiative — the Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics project — has been reduced from 1,000 clinics in 2017-18 to 530 in 2018-19. Against the target of 1,000, the government had 164 Mohalla Clinics in 2017-18. Similarly, the target for polyclinics that function six days a week was reduced from 150 in 2017-18 to 40 in 2018-19.

In the education sector, which along with healthcare has been the AAP government’s priority, the government had targeted construction of 20,748 additional classrooms in 2017-18, but managed to construct 6,781. For 2018-19, the target was set at 10,000 additional classrooms.

Having missed the target for introducing nursery classes in existing schools by just one school in 2017-18, the government nearly doubled the target to 305 schools from 156 schools.

With respect to maintenance of schools, the Outcome Budget showed that out of the 700 schools where annual white-washing and minor repair works were supposed to been carried out in 2017-2018, the works were done in 226 schools. The target was reduced from 700 in 2017-2018 to 500 schools for 2018-2019.