After making an appeal to the people to donate for running the day-to-day expenses of the party, the Arvind Kejriwal Government is in the process of making an appeal to “corporate houses” and its “well-wishers” across the globe to donate religiously for upgrading education and medical services in the national Capital.
This is perhaps the first occasion when the city Government would be openly requesting the corporate to pitch in its projects through their corporate social responsibility initiatives. The decision to approach the corporate for donations was taken at a high-level meeting of the principal secretaries, secretaries and heads of departments. The meeting was chaired by Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia.
The standing instructions were given to the principal secretary of the PWD and secretary education to finalise the concept of a modern school in a 3D format. The officers were told that the same, along with the features, could be listed on the Government website inviting donations from the CSR budget of Indian Corporate.
According to source, the secretary Information Technology was directed to create a separate portal with linkage to the Delhi Government home page listing the modern schools, modern hospitals, mohalla clinics being set by the administration with mechanism for online receipt donations.
With the Government’s total failure to increase its VAT collections, the administration is taking other measures to mop up funds to meet its 70-point agenda it had promised during the Assembly elections in Delhi.
The Government had collected about Rs19,000 crore through VAT in 2014-15. It has set the target of Rs24,000 crore for 2015-16. But the Government has totally failed to increase substantial VAT collections in the first quarter. It logged Rs100 crore less through VAT in June in comparison to the corresponding period last year. The drop in the VAT collections had set alarm bells ringing in the Delhi Secretariat. Acting swiftly, the administration increased VAT by from 20 per cent to 25 per cent on petrol and from 12.5 per cent to 16.6 per cent on diesel in the city.
The Kejriwal Government had already doubled its budget for education and earmarked about 50 per cent increase in its annual budget for 2015-16. Out of the total allocation, the largest amount of Rs9,836 crore had been allocated for education, an increase of 106 per cent over the previous Government’s budget.
The health sector had received the second highest allocation of Rs4,787 crore, followed by transport — Rs5,085 crore, which was 23 per cent more than the allocation of 2014-15. The administration had also launched a massive publicity blitz to highlight the historical increase it had made in its budgetary allocation for education and health sectors.
Ever since the enactment of the new law in April last year mandating companies to spend two per cent of their profit on CSR initiatives, estimates suggest that the CSR spending could touch Rs20,000 crore in the country.
The Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs said about 16,352 companies fall within the purview of Section 135 of the Companies Act. About Rs20,000 crore in total is expected to be spent by Corporates each year on CSR. As many as 30,000 Directors of Boards are likely to get directly involved in these initiatives.