SHILLONG, JUN 16: The Meghalaya government has disputed a media report that described 17 DoNER-funded projects as “stalled at zero progress”, saying the claim creates a misleading impression by presenting a single data point without the wider context of the Ministry’s own monitoring report.
In a statement issued Tuesday, the State government acknowledged that the “0% physical progress” figure came from the Ministry of DoNER’s May 2026 monitoring snapshot, but said the report in question “presents it in isolation and omits the wider context contained within that same report. The result is a public impression that is, regrettably, inaccurate.”
According to the state, the same DoNER document shows that Meghalaya’s project delivery is otherwise steady.
Of 81 monitored works, nearly 57 percent are either complete or in their final stages. Fourteen projects worth more than ₹200.92 crore have reached 100 percent physical completion, while another 32 are between 75 and 100 percent done. Based on this, the statement said, the state “ranks among the leading performers in the North East on project delivery”, a point it noted was missing from the earlier report.
The government clarified that a “0% physical progress” entry in a monitoring report is not a judgment of failure but simply means work had not begun as of the snapshot date.
It said this is standard for projects recently sanctioned and still moving through DPR clearance, tendering and award of work.
“Describing such projects as ‘stalled’ or ‘non-starters’ does not reflect how project monitoring works,” the statement read.
Of the 17 projects listed at zero percent, 11 are being handled by state departments and are currently in the tendering stage with work orders expected between June and July 2026.
The other six were sanctioned directly by the Ministry of DoNER to central agencies such as NESAC, NECTAR, IICA and NPCCL, and their execution lies with those agencies rather than the state.
While affirming that press scrutiny is “welcome and necessary”, the government urged that monitoring data be reported “in full and in context, so that readers are not left with a misleading impression drawn from a single line of a much larger report.”
It reiterated that the state remains committed to timely delivery and continues to monitor all sanctioned works to resolve bottlenecks.
“Hence, the characterisation of these projects as ‘non-starters’ is incorrect,” the statement concluded.
