Bharat Rural Livelihoods Foundation set up by UPA under government scanner

NEW DELHI: A foundation set up by the previous UPA government and including members of the erstwhile National Advisory Council headed by Sonia Gandhi is under the scanner of the new government which will have to provide funds for it to the tune of Rs 300 crore over the next few years.

The Bharat Rural Livelihoods Foundation ( BRLF) was created in 2013 by a Cabinet decision and the Narendra Modi government is assessing whether to continue with it, official sources said here today.

Soon after its creation, the Rural Development Ministry under Jairam Ramesh had signed a memorandum with the foundation for disbursement of funds to NGOs working in the tribal belts, particularly central and eastern parts of the country.

Under the memorandum, Rs 200 crore has already been provided to the foundation and Rs 300 crore is to be paid in the next two or three years.

The sources said the foundation was "built around the personality of the then minister (Ramesh)" and is being re-assessed.

With the foundation coming under the scanner, Ramesh today defended the decision to create the BRLF society, describing it as a "major institutional innovation" for pushing development in the tribal districts.

The foundation was created to replace scandal-hit CAPART (Council for Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology), a major promoter of rural development in India.

"Learning from the experience of CAPART, the BRLF is a major institutional innovation in social entrepreneurship and long-term capacity building in some of India's most difficult areas," he said in a statement here.