Ranchi: The State Government has admitted in the house that it has managed to spend only 52.16 percent of the previous budgetary
allocations during the first nine months (April-December 2018) of the ongoing fiscal 2018-19. The reply from the government followed
after Congress MLA from Lohardaga Sukhdeo Bhagat during the question hour raised the issue of spending only 44.43 percent funds of the previous budget in the first 9 months of the fiscal and had sought to know from the government what steps it was taking to ensure complete utilization of the funds.
Replying to the question Minister for Land Reforms and Revenue Department Amar Kumar Bauri said out of the 52.16 percent which has been spent so far it included 44.04 percent of the planned budgetary allocations. He said that compared to the previous fiscal the performance in this year so far is better and assured that the entire budget would be spent to complete the projects which are meant for the welfare of the people of the state.
On this Mr Bhagat pointed that as per the claims of the government it is clear that on an average per month 5 percent of the funds have been spent and sought to know that how suddenly the performance of the same officials will improve in the remaining three months of the financial year. He said that the acts smell of financial irregularities and pointed that even in the year 2017-18 a sum of Rs 15,000 was surrendered. Joining in the debate Pradeep Yadav of the JVM(P) said there was no doubt that this year also the funds would be surrendered. He said that the purpouse of bringing the budget early was to ensure that the schemes can be executed in a better manner and funds are utilized judicially. He said that even the government of India considers the money which is surrendered and kept in PL account as loans.
Mr Yadav sought to know how the officials will be able to simultaneously do two types of work first ensure that funds for 2018-19 are
utilized properly and second get approval for the schemes which would be executed in the budget of 2019-20. Stating his response the minister said that after the end of festivity in the month of December war goes on war footing till March. He said that Chief Minister Raghubar Das himself was conducting day by day scrutiny of the execution of the schemes and the departments have been given deadlines to complete the works on time.
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