The CAG in its report tabled on Tuesday in Parliament blamed the Ministry of Power (MOP) for deficiencies, violations and non-feasibility in the implementation of Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY), one of the flagship projects of the UPA.
The apex auditor pointed out several instances of failures on the part of the Ministry as well as Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) in deriving consistent data in achieving success of the much hyped project.
“There were inconsistencies in the figures which formed the basis of the targets for un-electrified and electrified villages that MOP projected. Coverage of both electrified and un-electrified villages underwent a significant change. Unreliability of such data is a matter of concern as assurance on achievement of targets that were being reflected in various proposals and REC data, was difficult to obtain.
“Ministry did not conduct feasibility study before launching the scheme, despite recommendations from the Standing Committee on Energy (14th lok Sabha) that it should obtain updated statistics on rural electrification from States and modify the rural electrification programme in the light of updated statistics. MOP did not have complete information from all States even by September 2008, indicating that the basis of figures used for both X and XI Plan was not sound. It was not possible to draw an assurance that MOP had identified the number of electrified villages, BPl households, etc. after considering the impact and outcome of earlier schemes,” said the CAG Report.
The report pointed out the flagship project relied on old and wrong data which led to the non-achievement of the actual objective. The auditor also found several violations in payment methods of several implementing agencies of the project and monitoring of the project failed on several instances.
“Monitoring was not adequate and deficiencies were noticed in all three tiers of quality control mechanism. In 1st tier, deficiencies were found in frequency, quality and in taking remedial action in response to the defects pointed out by Third party inspection agencies in their inspections,” said CAG, adding that Ministry of Power failed in monitoring the implementation.