The Congress does not lose any opportunity to flay state governments, ruled by rival parties, of misappropriating funds disbursed under the Centre's flagship schemes. The party is known to get particularly peeved when the credit for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (nregs), which should have gone to it, actually benefits the party in power in the state where the scheme is under implementation. That may have something to do with bad publicity. But what about bad governance in states ruled by the Congress? A recent government review of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (pmgsy) and the time-bound Bharat Nirman programmes has proved exactly this: non-Congress-ruled states have performed better than those ruled by the Congress. As part of its ambitious Bharat Nirman programme, the ruling Congress-led ui'a government aims to connect villages with a population of over 1,000 in the plains and 500 in hilly, tribal and desert areas, with an all-weather road under the pmgsy. The project is estimated to cost Rs48,000 crore and was to be concluded in 2009. The Planning Commission now believes that this would be completed only by 2011. And the findings have put the ruling party in a quandary. Laggard states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh have come out tops in implementing these programmes. All these states happened to be ruled by non-Congress governments. Elections to the assemblies in Rajasthan and MP are due next year and the Congress had hoped to cash in on the anti-incumbency trend, and reap a rich harvest of seats. But that may not be the situation on the ground. Rajasthan tops the list of states with the longest distance of roads laid at 25,598.98 km. Among other states, UP came out ahead despite the fact that for most part of the study the state was ruled by the Samajwadi Party, which was constantly at loggerheads with the Central government. UP is followed by Bjp-ruled Madhya Pradesh. The only Congress-ruled states that compare favourably with these states are Assam and Andhra Pradesh. Missing an ambitious plan Bharat Nirman, which is the flagship programme of the upa government, also sees non-Congress-ruled states doing better than the Congress-ruled ones. In the category of roads between habitats, Madhya Pradesh comes out best, followed by Rajasthan, Left-ruled West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. In the category of upgradation of existing roads too, Uttar Pradesh has done the best, followed by Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and, yet again, Rajasthan. Non-Congress-ruled states also performed better in terms of auditing procedures. The rural development ministry has acknowledged that Madhya Pradesh, Chhat-tisgarh and Orissa are the only states to have a technical audit of quality. What could be more worrying for the upa is that the government may miss out on its ambitious plan, to provide connectivity to 66,800 rural habitations across the country by building 146,000 km of road by 2009 in collaboration with state governments. With less than 19 months to go, only one-fifth of the habitations have been connected and work is under progress in another 22,000 habitations, adding up to just over half the target. This may deprive the coalition of an important publicity plank. Planning Commission officials and experts maintain that this was because of the failure of the state governments to hold up their side of the bargain. In nearly half the cases (almost 31,000), the state governments concerned have not yet submitted the detailed project reports (dpr) to the ministry of rural development, the nodal ministry executing this programme, dprs are blueprints of projects and, without obtaining them; the government cannot execute any road project. Once the proposal is received by the ministry, it takes four-five months to award the contract. But it appears that a large number of projects remain to be cleared and many states do not have the wherewithal to prepare dprs as there is acute shortage of civil engineers who prepare these reports. According to sources, in some states such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal, clearance of the balance dprs alone may happen in the second half of 2008. The ministry of rural development sees it differently. It hopes to clear all balance dprs by March 2008. Once the dprs are cleared, it takes 16-17 months to connect a habitation. Work may get delayed only in Bihar, West Bengal and Assam, that too should be complete in the financial year 2009-10. Most experts say this is an ambitious target.