The central government has sent several central schemes to probe into allegations of corruption and misappropriation of public funds, in at least two major schemes like MNREGA and PM Awas Yojana. photo credit: Debashish Bhaduri
On February 8, the Ministry of Education asked the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to conduct a special audit on the alleged misappropriation of funds from the PM Poshan scheme in West Bengal over the past three years. Just a few weeks back, the Calcutta High Court had directed the CAG to be impleaded as a party in a public interest litigation on state finances.
In the last few years, allegations of corruption have come to the fore in social welfare schemes of the Center and the State. The central government has sent several central schemes to look into allegations of corruption and misappropriation of public funds, in at least two major schemes such as MNREGA and PM Awas Yojana.
Vishwanath Goswami, a socio-legal researcher, and RTI activist, who has been keenly following the audits conducted by the CAG in West Bengal, said that the state of a single major social security scheme and project funded by the state government or the Center has not been audited by the CAG. since 2011.
Mr Goswami cited several instances where the West Bengal government had thwarted efforts by the CAG to audit key schemes. For example, in the year 2017, the CAG had written to the Women and Child Development Department for the audit of ‘Kanyashree Project’. Letter dated 13.02. In 2017, the state government expressed its inability to produce relevant records of the Kanyashree project due to “confidentiality and security”. In this case, the CAG had sought data and related records from the Chief Secretary of the State on 30.03.2019. 2017 and later noticed that nothing has been received from the department.
Kanyashree Prakashan, Cash Incentive Scheme for School Girls was launched by West Bengal in 2013 and the beneficiaries of this scheme are around ₹81 lakh. Till the financial year 2019-20, the state government had spent Rs 8277.6 crore for its implementation. In the year 2022-23, the state government’s allocation for the scheme was ₹1866.2 crore.
In another instance relating to the digitization of ration cards, the request of the Secretary Food and Supplies Department seeking an audit was turned down by the CAG on 02.09.2016. The document also states that the CAG also approached the Chief Secretary on 30.03.2019. 2017 but no audit could be conducted.
Similarly, the audit sought on law and order during the civil unrest including arms licenses as well as e-procurement in state government departments did not see the light of day. In a letter to the Finance Secretary and the Treasury and Accounts Directorate in April 2019, the Deputy Accountant General of the CAG sought access to documents and the treasury’s IT system to conduct a necessary audit, which was also not considered.
“These are just a few instances where I have collected documents that the CAG audit could not be conducted due to repeated resistance from the state government. The CAG, however, cannot escape its constitutional responsibility as it has been mandated to conduct audits relating to flagship schemes. Therefore, along with the state government, the CAG is also answerable for the state’s financial mess,” Mr Goswami said. ,
On 17 October 2022, Mr. Goswami sought details of the CAG’s audit of social welfare schemes in West Bengal since 2011 through an RTI query. The first reply given by the CAG on November 7, 2022, had said that “the requisite information is not readily available” with this authority and that the RTI petitioner had “gone too far” from the spirit of the RTI Act in seeking the information.
When Mr. Goswami filed the first appeal before Satish Kumar Garg, Principal Accountant General (Audit) West Bengal, the response was completely different. “The office conducts audit of various functionaries under the state government. Such audits are not done scheme-wise unless performance audits or schematic audits are conducted on some selected schemes,” Mr Garg replied on January 4, 2023.
Referring to the ongoing politics over corruption in schemes like MNREGA and PM Awas Yojana, the RTI activist claimed that if proper audit is done on time then the central teams of West Bengal as well as the state government will have no reason to raise their voice. There is no reason. money and turned the whole issue into a “political farce”.
A previous version of the article contained an error in the headline. The same has been improved.