Not overlapping with what the Government claimed in Assembly on Saturday regarding outcomes of the CAG reports for the year ending in March 2016, the Accountant General (Audit) has raised grave concerns about planning acumen of the Government. Sharing details of the findings, Jharkhand AG C Nedunchezhian said on the day that lack of vision while planning was visible across the departments and it resulted in gross losses to almost all the departments in the State.
One of the most shocking blows for the Government in CAG report, however, remains on the observations made on Ease of Doing Business which the Government has tried milching the most in recent times not only within the country, but also overseas. The report openly said that that the ground reality on Ease of Doing Business was definitely different from what the Government enjoyed claiming.
“Ease of Doing Business in Jharkhand suffered from constraints in the field of setting up business, allotment of land, uninterrupted supply of power, water and raw materials. Single Window System was partially functional but Special Economic Zone couldn’t be established,” said the report.
“We have come across numerous examples of poor planning and mismanagement during audit for year ending March 2016. This not only resulted in abandoned plans midway, most of them from infrastructure sector, but also claimed additional funds and took more than required time to get those completed,” said the AG.
Notably, the Government informed the Assembly, courtesy CAG report, of its achievements and performances for the year under supervision. “The CAG has said that the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) has remained at 11.40 percent which is way ahead of the national GDP of 8.7 percent. The report also says that the Government has received more revenue than its expenditure resulting in Rs 4,085 crores of revenue surplus,” said the Government in Assembly during concluding day of its Monsoon Session.
However, the CAG report claimed that the poor planning of Government reflected utterly vivid in performance audit. “The State had failed critically in creating sufficient infrastructure in terms of public health facilities as required under NHRM norms. The gap between requirement and available health facilities such as CHCs, PHCs and HSCs in State increased to 51, 79 and 60 percent in 2016 in comparison to 45, 76 and 55 percent respectively in 2011,” revealed the report.
Though the Government said in the Assembly that the actions were being taken on objections and observations made in the CAG report regarding local bodies, the AG said that Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) and Dhanbad Municipal Corporation (DhMC) levied and collected (between April 13 and March 16) Rs 1.37 crores as Service Tax against leviable amount of Rs 2.93 crores.
The CAG report has also come harsh on Departments like Rural Development which have, according to the AG, reflected utter negligence in planning and implementation. “The (Rural Development) Department is also among those ones which have kept demanding and many a times getting allocated too, higher budgetary allocations despite failing to utilise budget allotted to them,” said the AG.
The only major relief that the Government can enjoy is that CAG has found no scam-like thing in governance during year under supervision. “It is true that the Government agencies have demonstrated incompetence at the level of long term planning and execution. It is also true that the findings are full of financial irregularities.
However, none of them appear to be named as scam. The financial irregularities and mismanagement haven’t appeared deliberate enough to be called scam beyond doubt,” said the AG.