Ranchi, (Asian independent) The Jharkhand government is unable to give an account of the expenditure of more than Rs 1,03,000 crore given to the various state departments.
The state government has given this amount to its various departments during the last 16 years. The departments spent the amount received from the government but did not submit full details i.e. the utility certificate.
The departments officers have repeatedly ignored the reminders sent on behalf of the state government.
Now the Jharkhand Chief Secretary, Sukhdev Singh, has written a letter to the Secretaries of all the concerned state departments and has expressed serious concern about it and has asked them to take immediate steps to submit the pending utility certificate of the expenditure of the total amount spent by the state government.
According to the letter of the Chief Secretary, a total amount of Rs 1,03, 459.14 lakh is the pending utility certificate in various state departments. The Jharkhand Auditor General wrote a letter to the state government on July 26, 2022, regarding this issue.
In this letter, complete details of the pending utility certificate for the expenditure of government funds have been given.
According to this letter, the various concerned state departments have not submitted the utility certificates of the amount given in more than 39,000 schemes or items in the state.
The utility certificates are considered extremely significant for transparency in the financial management of all state governments. On the basis of this certificate, it is decided how the amount released by the government for any item was utilised.
It is considered as the final account of expenditure of government funds. There is also a rule that all the concerned state departments will submit the utility certificate of the amount received from the state government throughout the year, only then another instalment will be given to them for the next year.
A copy of this has to be sent to the Accountant General of the state. It is financial mismanagement by the Jharkhand government so far that every year a large number of schemes and the amount given in various items as pending utility certificates. This is the reason that from 2006-07 to 2021-22, the amount spent without utility certificate has reached more than 1,00,000 crore. Taking into account the financial year 2021-22 that ended on March 31, 2022, only, various state departments did not submit the final account of Rs 15,406 crore.
The Accountant General has also implemented the online system of submitting utility certificate from September 2019. Despite this, the officers of the various state departments have maintained laxity in their approach.
According to the data, the Jharkhand Rural Development Department is the most careless in submitting the final account of the expenditure of the government funds as it has not submitted the utility certificate of Rs 14,361 crore.
Similarly, the state Agriculture Department has not submitted the final details of the expenditure of Rs 611 crore, Energy Department Rs 9,234 crore, along with other state departments.
The Jharkhand Chief Secretary has said in a letter to the Secretaries of various state departments that even after several instructions, non-submission of utility certificates of large amounts is a serious matter. He has directed the Secretaries of various state departments to continuously monitor the matter and report the online utility certificates submission to the state government.
