'Yes, I mean no, Mr Prime Minister'

MUMBAI: Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has blamed babus for a faux pas that blamed the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) for the tardy implementation of the PM’s package for the regions where farmers took their lives in large numbers.

This forced an embarrassed Mr Deshmukh to personally write a letter to Mr Singh seeking to diffuse the controversy over the affidavit filed by the state’s rehabilitation department. Sounding apologetic in the letter, a copy of which is with ET, Mr Deshmukh has tried to undo the damage done by what a senior bureaucrat termed as a “wrongly worded affidavit”.

The affidavit, filed before the Supreme Court, which is hearing a PIL on suicides, gives the impression that relief measures in Vidarbha have got delayed since funds earmarked under the Prime Minister’s package have not been released in time by the Centre. It prompted the PMO to order a probe into the facts of the matter.

With more than 80% of the funds under the PM’s package lined up for release in the next two years, and Mumbai’s urban renewal projects awaiting the Centre’s clearance, the state government on Monday launched corrective measures to placate the PMO.

Leading from the front, Mr Deshmukh personally wrote to Mr Singh, and has also got the relief and rehabilitation department to issue a clarification.

Sources said Mr Deshmukh, campaigning for the Congress in Vidarbha for the Zilla Parishad polls, did not want to invite the PMO’s ire on the sensitive issue of farm suicides. So, the letter is all praise for the PM’s package and says everything is fine with its implementation.

“We sincerely appreciate your concern over the high incidence of farmers’ suicides. The assistance from the PM’s relief fund has been of immense help to needy families in Vidarbha,” Mr Deshmukh has said. The chief minister has, however, requested the Prime Minister to sanction additional grants for the scheme, though he has assured that the state would continue the scheme in any event.

The clarification issued by the state says that the affidavit nowhere states that the funds under PM’s package have not been released. “But it’s a badly written affidavit.

Instead of thanking the PMO for releasing Rs 3 crore for a novel initiative to help the families of farmers, the affidavit gives the impression that the scheme would have stopped, but for the state’s intervention to continue it on its own,” a senior bureaucrat admitted.