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Astronomical amounts released to select depts

By R Dutta Choudhury

GUWAHATI, Dec 1 � The special audit of the accounts of the North Cachar Hills Autonomous Council by the office of the Accountant General (AG) has already proved that funds in excess of budget allocation were sent to the Council for years but the annexure attached to the audit report proved that astronomical amounts of excess funds were released only to a few selected departments of the Council.

The annexure of the audit report proved that the departments of the Council like General Education, Roads and Bridges, Health, Social Welfare, Public Health Engineering, Social Welfare, etc. were the biggest beneficiaries as those are the departments which received the largest amount of excess funds from the Government during the period from 2007-08 to June 12, 2009.

The report revealed that in the year 2007-08, the Roads and Bridges Department received the highest amount of excess funds. According to the information furnished by the Hill Areas Department of the Government of Assam, the Budget allocation for Roads and Bridges for the year was Rs 598.23 lakh under both plan and non plan heads, but as per the records of the Council, the department received an amount of Rs 3307.09 lakh, that is Rs 3069.27 lakh over the budget allocation.

The Budget allocation for the General Education Department for the year was Rs 635 lakh but the department received an amount of Rs 2678.03 lakh, that is Rs 2043.03 lakh over the budget allocation. The allocation for Health and Family Welfare Department was Rs 424.85 lakh and it received Rs 1241.08 lakh, that is Rs1174.94 lakh over the allocation, while, the Public Health Engineering Department received an excess amount of Rs 1917.29 lakh and the Social Welfare Department received an excess amount of Rs 1209.09 lakh.

Several other departments received excess amounts over the budget allocation but the amounts were not as big as these few departments while, only a handful of departments received the exact allocation.

Similar was the case in the financial year 2008-09 and the same departments were the biggest beneficiaries as those departments received the highest amount of excess funds. General Education Department was the biggest beneficiary for the year as it received funds amounting to Rs 2280.62 lakh in excess of budget allocation, while, the Public Health Engineering Department received excess amount of Rs 1737.15 lakh, Health received excess amount of Rs 922.64 lakh, Roads and Bridges received excess amount of Rs 1558.54 lakh and Social Welfare received excess amount of Rs 1673.92 lakh. In that year also several other departments received funds in excess of budget allocation and interestingly a few departments like Dairy Development, Major and Medium Irrigation, Sports and Youth Welfare etc even did not even receive the budget allocation.

Up to June 12, 2009 also, the same departments were the biggest beneficiaries with General Education topping the list by receiving an excess amount of Rs 1384.97 lakh during the short period.

The AG report pointed out that excess appointment of teachers resulted in excess expenditures by the Council over the years, which increased the expenditures of the General Education Department. The report pointed out that the number of teachers appointed by the Council were far more than the approved ratio for the hill areas. The Council incurred extra expenditure of Rs 16.70 crore in two years by appointing excess number of teachers, the report added.

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