Kathmandu, Oct. 11 -- Gandaki Province which received funds under the Constituency Development Programme for the first time this fiscal year has followed a familiar path-to use the allocated funds piecemeal in projects preferred by the lawmakers.

The programme, which was first introduced by the late finance minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari, in 1994, to please central-level lawmakers, has continued to date because of its distributive nature and due to potential of gross misuse of such funds for the projects aligned to political parties and leaders. The provincial governments also followed the same model after their establishment in 2017.

A regulation introduced by the provincial government has allowed allocating as low as Rs100,000 for a p...