EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 58 of 120

Correct — B, (b) 1, 2 and 3 only. Three of the four statements describe the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme accurately; the fourth describes it with two of its rules swapped. Statement 1 is correct. The scheme was launched in December 1993 and has been administered by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation since shortly after its launch; that Ministry issues the guidelines, releases the money and monitors the works. Statement 2 is correct. MPLADS funds are non-lapsable — an entitlement not released or not spent in a financial year does not expire at the end of it but is carried forward for release in later years. This is unusual in government finance, where an unspent grant ordinarily lapses, and it is designed so that delay in identifying or executing works does not cost a constituency its allocation. Statement 3 is correct, and it is the constitutional heart of the scheme. The Member RECOMMENDS works; the recommendation goes to the District Authority, which alone examines eligibility, sanctions the work, releases the money, gets it executed through implementing agencies and reports on it. No money passes through the Member's hands. That division exists because a Member of Parliament is a legislator, and the scheme would be constitutionally awkward if it made him an executive spending authority. Statement 4 is incorrect, and it fails on both of its limbs. A Member of the Lok Sabha may recommend works in his or her CONSTITUENCY, not merely somewhere in the State. A Member of the Rajya Sabha may recommend works anywhere in the STATE from which he or she is elected — not anywhere in the country. The entitlement to recommend works anywhere in India belongs to NOMINATED Members of either House, who represent no territorial constituency at all and are therefore given the whole country instead. Statement 4 has taken that nominated-member rule and attached it to Rajya Sabha members, which is the single most common misstatement about this scheme. The elimination is quick once statement 4 is seen to fail: it removes options (a), (c) and (d) together, and no assessment of the other three statements is strictly needed. That is worth noticing as a technique — in a four-statement item, finding the one clearly false statement often decides the question by itself.

• (a)1 and 4 only — It keeps the false statement and throws away two true ones. Statement 4 misallocates the territorial entitlements, giving a Rajya Sabha Member the run of the country when that belongs to nominated Members; and the non-lapsable character of the funds and the recommend-only role of the Member, both correctly stated, are discarded. The pairing is attractive to a candidate who is sure only of the nodal ministry and treats the rest as a guess.
• (c)2, 3 and 4 only — It rightly keeps the two statements about the funds and the Member's role, then adds the false territorial statement and drops the true one about the nodal ministry. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation is an unexpected home for a works scheme, which is precisely why candidates doubt it — the instinct is to expect the Ministry of Rural Development or of Housing and Urban Affairs. The scheme has nevertheless sat with the statistics ministry for almost its entire life.
• (d)1, 2, 3 and 4 — The option that requires nothing to be rejected, and therefore the one that costs a candidate who has read three statements, found them all correct and stopped. Statement 4 has to be tested on its own: a Lok Sabha Member is tied to a constituency, a Rajya Sabha Member to the State that elected him, and only a nominated Member may recommend works anywhere in the country. An 'all of them' option in this format is a bet that no statement has been altered, and here one has.

MPLADS is a Central sector scheme, fully funded by the Government of India, under which each Member of Parliament receives an annual entitlement to recommend works of a developmental nature creating durable community assets — drinking water, education, public health, sanitation, roads and the like — in the area he or she represents. The entitlement began at five lakh rupees per Member in 1993-94 and was raised in stages to five crore rupees a year from 2011-12, released in two instalments of two and a half crore each. The territorial rules follow representation: a Lok Sabha Member recommends within the constituency, a Rajya Sabha Member within the State of election, and a nominated Member of either House anywhere in the country; limited exceptions allow recommendations outside those areas for relief in a calamity. Money is released not to the Member but to the District Authority, which sanctions and implements. The guidelines earmark a share of the entitlement for areas inhabited by Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes — fifteen per cent and seven and a half per cent respectively — bar certain classes of work such as assets for individual benefit and places of religious worship, and expect the Member to inspect a proportion of the sanctioned works. Funds are non-lapsable. The scheme has been suspended once in its history, for two financial years during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the money was diverted to the Consolidated Fund of India, and was afterwards restored. It has been criticised, including by the Comptroller and Auditor General and in constitutional commentary, for blurring the line between the legislature and the executive, and defended as the only untied fund a Member can direct at a local need.

Government schemes are a fixed part of the polity and governance block of this paper, and MPLADS is asked more often than most because its rules are precise and easy to misstate. The examiner's method here is to leave three statements untouched and alter only the territorial one, which means a candidate who knows the scheme in outline but not in detail will find nothing to object to. The habit rewarded is checking the statement that contains a distinction — here between the two Houses — because that is where a scheme question is normally falsified.

• MPLADS was launched in December 1993 and is administered by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
• It is a Central sector scheme, fully funded by the Government of India.
• The annual entitlement is five crore rupees per Member since 2011-12, released in two instalments of two and a half crore rupees.
• MPLADS funds are non-lapsable — an unreleased or unspent entitlement is carried forward instead of expiring.
• The Member only RECOMMENDS works; the District Authority sanctions, releases funds and gets them implemented.
• A Lok Sabha Member recommends works in the constituency; a Rajya Sabha Member in the State from which elected; a nominated Member of either House anywhere in the country.
• Fifteen per cent of the entitlement is earmarked for areas inhabited by Scheduled Castes and seven and a half per cent for Scheduled Tribe areas.
• The scheme was suspended for two financial years during the COVID-19 pandemic, the funds going to the Consolidated Fund of India, and was afterwards restored.

• Giving a Rajya Sabha Member the whole country, which is the nominated Member's entitlement.
• Reading the Lok Sabha Member's area as the State rather than the constituency.
• Assuming funds are placed at the Member's disposal, when they go to the District Authority.
• Expecting a works scheme to sit with a works ministry rather than with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

Scheme questions in EO/AO papers ask for the nodal ministry, the year of launch, the funding pattern, the entitlement, and the division of roles between the recommending and the implementing authority. They come as multi-statement items with code options, and the false statement is usually a real rule attached to the wrong actor, so learn each scheme as a table of who does what rather than as a paragraph.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under MPLADS, the authority that sanctions works and releases funds to the implementing agencies is the :

  • (a)Member of Parliament concerned
  • (b)District Authority of the district concerned
  • (c)Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation directly
  • (d)State Government's finance department

  Answer(b) District Authority of the district concerned

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the MPLADS guidelines, a nominated Member of Parliament may recommend works :

  • (a)Only in the State in which he or she ordinarily resides
  • (b)Only in the national capital
  • (c)In one or more districts anywhere in the country
  • (d)Only jointly with an elected Member of the Lok Sabha

  Answer(c) In one or more districts anywhere in the country