Even unutilized money not returned to sanctioning agencies
*Evolve mechanism for timely disbursal of assistance
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Apr 6: The official apathy has not even spared the victims of the disasters in Jammu and Kashmir and they were denied the benefits of huge funds sanctioned by the Government of India and other agencies for the years together. Moreover, such unutilized funds were allowed to remain in the bank accounts instead of being refunded to the Union Government.
This has been revealed by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in its latest report submitted in the Parliament recently.
Consequent to the fire incident of Khundru Army Ammunition Depot on August 11, 2007, the Ministry of Defence released Rs 26.74 crore in favour of Deputy Commissioner, Anantnag for disbursement among the victims of fire incident.
The scrutiny of the records in February 2020 revealed that compensation amounting to Rs 23.19 crore had been disbursed to the affected population under different categories up to December 2009. Thereafter, no payment on account of compensation was made.
“The balance amount of Rs 3.55 crore towards compensation remained un-disbursed as of March 2019 in the Bank Account of the Drawing and Disbursing Officer (DDO) for almost a decade and had accumulated to Rs 5.41 crore including interest”, the CAG said, adding “the specific reasons for the compensation remaining undisbursed was neither on record nor provided to audit by the DDO concerned”.
“As the funds were provided by Ministry of Defence, the undisbursed/unutilised funds were required to be refunded to Government of India. Although this was brought to the notice of the concerned department of the J&K Government in February 2020, their replies were awaited till September 2020”, the CAG has pointed out.
It has further been pointed out by the supreme audit institution of the country that funds had been allotted to DDOs from time to time for disbursement of compensation to the victims of various natural calamities including displaced people of border villages due to cross border firing.
The un-utilsed funds were required to be returned to the sanctioning authority. However, audit scrutiny of the records in February 2019 revealed that for seven DDOs out of 58 DDOs selected in the sample units from Revenue Department, an unutilised balance of Rs 4.28 crore was lying in the bank accounts of these seven DDOs as of March 31, 2019.
An amount of Rs 1.25 crore was lying in the official bank account of Tehsildar Akhnoor under Border Firing-Migrants Scheme, Rs 0.19 crore in the account of Tehsildar Bishnah under Crop Relief Paddy 2010-11 Scheme, Rs 1.18 crore in the account of Tehsildar R S Pura under Relief 2009 Scheme, Rs 0.19 crore in the account of Tehsildar Sunderbani under Drought Relief Scheme, Rs 0.71 crore in the account of Tehsildar Nowshera under Relief of 2009 Scheme, Rs 0.66 crore in the account of Tehsildar Reasi and Rs 0.10 crore in the account of Assistant Commissioner Revenue, Rajouri.
It was also noticed that the funds allotted prior to 2014-15 were also available in these accounts prior to the actual amount of funds allotted. However, a credit balance of Rs 4.28 crore in the bank accounts indicated that the funds allotted had not been disbursed fully among the intended beneficiaries till March 2019.
During the course of audit, Tehsildar, Nowshera refunded an un-disbursed amount of Rs 0.71 crore to Deputy Commissioner, Rajouri in November 2019. Similarly, Tehsildar, Sunderbani also refunded in November 2019 the un-disbursed relief of Rs 0.19 crore to Deputy Commissioner, Rajouri at the instance of audit, the CAG has mentioned in the report.
On the basis of these instances, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India has recommended that a fool proof mechanism should be evolved so that victims of disasters don’t remain deprived of the benefits of the funds sanctioned by the concerned agencies of J&K Government and Union Government for unspecified period.
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