The Bihar government’s worsening fiscal management apparent in the massive AC-DC bill mismatch of `22,575.37 crore and possible irregularities worth `409.15 crore as exposed in the latest CAG report on Wednesday prompted the Opposition parties to demand a CBI probe.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)’s report on the Nitish Kumar-led government’s financial management for 2010-11 has pointed at several violations of the Bihar Treasury Code. While the NDA government is keen on spending money on various development projects, the CAG report’s findings show that it feels less inclined to explain the details of the expenditure to the supreme constitutional watchdog.
As per the report, tabled in the Assembly on Tuesday, the pending detailed contingency (DC) bills for the government’s development expenses made by withdrawals from the treasury through abstract contingent (AC) bills are worth `22,575.37 crore. Out of the `25,331 crore withdrawn and spent between 2002-3 and 2010-11, DC bills for only `2,755 crore were submitted to the CAG.
While successive regimes in Bihar have taken the submission of DC bills lightly, the rate of submission has fallen drastically from 26.08 per cent in 2002-3 to 0.23 per cent in 2010-11. Worse, the government withdrew as high as `2,749.82 crore in March 2011. Of this, `937 crore was withdrawn in the last four days of the fiscal’s last month. The Opposition parties have termed these withdrawal “March loot,” alleging misuse of these funds.
Significantly, the CAG report has pointed at 1,034 cases of defalcation, misappropriation, losses and theft to the tune of `409.15 crore up to March 2011. Besides, over 30 per cent of the DC bills so far submitted were photocopies instead of originals. The state government had to surrender `1,817 crore allocated for 93 schemes in 2010-11 for failure to implement them. “The government has been busy misusing development funds,” said Leader of the Opposition Abdul Bari Siddiqui.