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| Rs. 78428.62 crore yet to be regularized, Rs. 3762.45 crore unspent, 90 percent expenditure in March | | CAG unveils J&K's financial mess, questions legislative competence | | Syed Junaid Hashmi
JAMMU, Apr 4: Audit of state finances by Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has put a question mark on the planning, estimation and legislative competence of those running the state government.
It has picked up holes in the annual budgetary exercise and stated that state planning and development department has failed to ensure scheme specific funding and instead, prefers placing lump sum amounts at the disposal of the controlling officers. This has resulted in poor budgetary and administrative control.
Owing to this, state government incurred an expenditure of Rs. 6130.34 crore in excess of the approved budgetary provisions. As projected and demanded by various government departments, state legislature through vote allowed the state government to expend sum of Rs. 10, 312.58 crore during the financial year 2010-11.
However, government expended Rs. 16443.43 crore i.e. Rs. 6130.34 in excess of the allocated sum. Of this, there was excess expenditure of Rs. 1049.81 crore in 11 grants and 1 appropriation in the revenue section while in the capital section, excess expenditure amounted to Rs. 5080.95 crore in five grants and 1 appropriation.
Article 205 of the constitution of India makes it mandatory for the state government to get the excess over a grant regularized by the state legislature. Since the regularization is not time bound, it is done after completion of discussion over appropriation accounts by Public Accounts Committee (PAC). However, this exercise has never been done.
Due to this, excess expenditure amounting to Rs. 78428.62 crore for the years 1998-2010 is yet to be regularized. Further, state budget manual stipulates that departments should surrender excess funds. Due to lack of budgetary control, an amount of Rs. 3762.45 crore remained unspent with 27 different departments. Hence, non-surrender of funds deprived the government opportunity to transfer them to needy sectors.
DDOs of these 27 departments are yet to be issued show cause notices for deliberately keeping the finance department in dark. Inaction on the part of state government has resulted 10 departments persistently leaving huge amount of funds as unspent without intimating finance department about the same. The unspent amount has always remained in excess of Rs. 5 crore and government despite being repeatedly asked has failed to intimate CAG about the reasons for unspent amount.
After the unspent amount, audit has pointed out that in cases, involving 11 grants and one appropriation, an ill-advised government obtained supplementary provision of Rs. 754.08 crore in excess of the original provision in anticipation of the expenditure. However, the final expenditure of Rs.1648.31 crore was less than the original grant of Rs. 2394.54 crore. Due to this, Rs. 746.23 crore remained unspent.
Callousness in planning could be observed from the fact that government booked an expenditure of Rs. 565.42 crore without any provision in the original estimates and also without re-appropriation orders. Audit rebutted government claims of unparalleled developmental works by stating that 13 departments expended more than 80 percent of the amount during the last quarter of the financial year 2010-11.
Of this, these 13 departments expended more than 60 percent of the funds during the last month of the financial year. More importantly, Agriculture and Social welfare departments booked 94 percent of their expenditure during the last quarter. CAG has criticized the state government for being unable to put an end to this practice of booking expenditure at the end of the year.
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