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| Amazing! 40-yrs on, more than one lakh crore not regularised in JK’s financial system | | | Peerzada Ummer
Early Times Report
Jammu, Jan 15: Call it an inefficiency or lackadaisical attitude of successive regimes in J&K, there is a whooping amount of more than one lakh crore yet to be regularised in the financial system of the erstwhile state.
As per Section 82 of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir, it was mandatory for the State Government to get the excess over a grant/ appropriation regularized by the State Legislature. Although no time limit for regularization of expenditure had been prescribed under the Section, the regularization of excess expenditure was ought to be done after the completion of discussion of the Appropriation Accounts by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
As the Appropriation Accounts of 1980-81 onwards had not been discussed in PAC, the excess expenditure aggregating Rs 1,07,664.29 crore for the years 1980-2017 is yet to be regularized by the State Legislature.
After including further excess expenditure of Rs 6,397.06 crore during 2017-18 as brought out in the preceding Sub-section, the aggregate excess expenditure requiring regularization by the Legislature stands at Rs 1,14,061.35 crore.
The audit conducted by the government of India recently observed that such a practice was done in violation of Section 81 of the Constitution, and was contrary to legislative intent and defeats the objective of ensuring accountability of the executive over utilization of public money. Excess expenditure remaining un-regularized for such extended period needs to be viewed seriously as this dilutes the legislative control over the exchequer and therefore all the existing cases of excess expenditure need to be got regularized at the earliest. Such un voted expenditure may be stopped, except in case(s) of dire and extreme emergency, the cost of which cannot be met from Contingency Fund. “These amounts have remained unregularized for very long.
If these amounts are not regularized, it may have implications on certification of Finance and Appropriation Accounts in future.” reads the findings of the report in possession of Early Times newspaper.
This newspaper had earlier reported that during the financial year of 2014-15, , it was observed in Minor Head 800-Other Deposits subordinate to Major Head 8443-Civil Deposits that despite a balance of Rs342.36 crore after a withdrawal of Rs53.64 crore, an amount -of Rs251.35 crore was added to the Minor Head, which was unnecessary and violation of the financial norms.
The accumulated balance of Rs540.07 crore at the close of the year 2015 should have been written back to the respective Major Heads of account under the Consolidated Fund from which these were originally transferred, as the drawals from the Minor Head of account in the subsequent years would not require Legislative approval and thus would escape Legislative scrutiny through the Appropriation Account mechanism.
Besides, it was noticed during Audit check of vouchers that the Commissioner/Secretary to Government School Education Department and Commissioner/Secretary to Government Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj had withdrawn an amount of Rs14.25 crore & Rs117.14 crore respectively from the Consolidated Fund of State at the fag end of the financial year 2014-15 and parked it under Major Head-8443 Civil Deposit to avoid lapsing of Funds. |
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