New Delhi ,March 27: The Planning Commission, in a presentation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has suggested changes in the guidelines of the top 20 Centre-sponsors schemes to include audits by the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India because the Central government has been spending large sums of money (about Rs 10,00,000 crores in the 11th Five-Year Plan period) on various Central schemes in the social sector and on rural development programmes, but it does not have any means to control the process of actual delivery at the grassroots level

In the presentation, a copy of which is with this newspaper, the Plan panel argued that the ministries managing such schemes at present do not have the capacity to track actual expenditure by the implementing agencies. "Minis-tries can only track outgo of funds from the Centre and utilisation certificates of such funds from state governments," it said

Claiming that serious pro-blems exist in the "effectiveness of the implementation of such schemes," the panel said, "Though funds flow from the Centre, it does not have the tools to directly control the implementing agencies, which are general non-governmental organisations or special purpose vehicles. It also cannot withhold funds as long as expenditure is taking place."

Suggesting measures to improve implementation to make the schemes more inclusive, the Plan panel says, "We need to collaborate with Central government agencies on allotting codes for each flagship scheme, like the MGNREGA, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, mid-day meal programme and total sanitation programme. The allocation of the codes should be done in such a way that the same codes are used at the state level. With this in place, actual expenditure on the ground can effectively be tracked."

Currently, the CAG mandate does not allow it to audit "autonomous bodies or societies", so the panel suggested it should "explicitly be included in the schemes’ guidelines" that the CAG shall "audit the entities". The Planning Commission also sought to develop a "prescribed format of accounts" for such schemes.

The 11th Plan expenditure target includes agriculture Rs 66,705 crores, education Rs 2,69,872.79 crores, social justice Rs 81,416.23 crores, rural development Rs 2,65,821.68 crores and health Rs 1,40,135 crores.

Mukesh Ranjan