In a bid to bring transparency and establish smooth communication between State and Union Governments, the Union Government has appointed a separate Area officer (AO) to deal with the separate State department wise. With this order, State Government officials, who either adopted lackadaisical approach while dealing with the Union Government or were not sending utilization certification (UC) of the Central Government funds, are in a tizzy.
The AO has been empowered to cross check the utilization certificate, which would be submitted by the state government, at any given point of time.
The AO will visit the assigned State at least once in every quarter to review the ground situation. On condition of anonymity, an official said that if the Union Government implements the order strictly, then several anomalies may be unearthed because officials have swindled money.
These AO will be responsible for liquidation of outstanding utilization certificate (UC) for their respective State or Union territories.
Every AO depending on pendency of UCs, will be visiting the state/ UTs allocated to them at least on quarterly basis and as and when required by the department concerned. later, AO will submit their report indicating liquidation of UCs. They will collect details of pending UCs and sanction letters from respective sections/ Desk and carry them during their visit.
AO should aware about the fund flow mechanism in the State. Even AO will make sure that the fund is made available to the executive agency within two months of the fund transfer to the States so that timely action may start.
The State Government is supposed to get the audit of the account done immediately within the first three months of the closure of the financial year and the UCs should be submitted to the union government along with the audit report of the CAG empanelled Charted Accountant and statement of expenditure.
Talking to The Pioneer, an officer said that with this order, they are under pressure to submit UCs; otherwise, they will not get their due from Union Government in future. Earlier, they used to get money from Union Government and they were making delay in submission of UC.
If Union Government implement this order strictly then state government would not receive their share from union government due to lackadaisical approach of government officials and several anomalies may appear in future as well.