The preparations of the State government for the budget of 2024-25 have been hit by the sluggishness of the various departments. As many as 60 head of departments (HoD) of the State government have not sent their budget demand for next year’s budget to the finance department. The secretary finance Dilip Jawalkar held a review meeting of the proposals sent by different departments in the State secretariat on Thursday. He said that the finance department had asked all the departments to send their budget demands by December 15 but only 40 out of 100 departments have submitted their demand as yet. Jawalkar said that the main reason for departments not submitting their demand is that they have not filled in the details of the approved posts and the personnel deployed against them. He observed that this creates hurdles in proper monitoring in terms of financial management and there remains a possibility of excess expenditure.

 The secretary said that the finance department is working on a project to collect data of sanctioned and working posts to integrate it with the IFMS portal of the treasury but the departments are showing sluggishness in it.

 On a terse note, the secretary said that the HoDs and drawing and disbursing officers will not be able to disburse salaries if deployment of personnel on the sanctioned post is not done. He said that the regular review of the IFMS portal will be done so that the officers and employees do not face any problem regarding scale, promotion and pension.

Jawalkar said that the director of the secondary education department had sought special relaxation to the department since the data of eight thousand posts is not available. He said that this demand of the secondary education department has been rejected. The department has been asked to provide necessary information without any delay. The finance secretary expressed annoyance at the fact that no representative was sent in the meeting