Relaxations only one-time, not in future
Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, Mar 10: Liabilities in Jammu and Kashmir have crossed Rs 650 crore prompting the State Government to immediately enforce new mechanism to “tide over the crisis” and clear majority of payments, which fall well within the norms and give one-time concession in certain cases but with prior conditions so that no irregularities or acts of omission and commissions are reported.
Highly placed sources told the Excelsior that with virtual “crisis like situation” prevailing due to piling up of the liabilities to more than Rs 650 crore, the Finance Ministry of the State Government headed by Dr Haseeb Drabu today directed that all those bills, which have been issued against “technical sanction” should be cleared immediately.
“Only today, the Finance Department released Rs 44 crore to Public Works Department (PWD), which along with Public Health Engineering (PHE) and other Departments, were facing problems in clearing the liabilities. More funds would be released in next few days,” they said.
Asserting that there was no dearth of funds or any kind of “financial crisis” in Jammu and Kashmir, sources said the problem has erupted only because of the fact that some of the Departments especially those dealing with engineering works didn’t properly adopt the new mechanism of “fiscal discipline and financial reforms”, introduced by the Finance Ministry as a part of its bold decision to maintain discipline and end corruption in all the Departments.
When approached for comments, Finance Minister Dr Haseeb Drabu told the Excelsior that he has issued directions for clearing all those bills, which have technical sanction. The bills, which don’t have technical sanction, will be verified either by the concerned Engineers or the Drawing and Disbursement Officers (DDOs) for clearance, he added.
Admitting that liabilities of various Departments have piled up to around Rs 650 crore, sources said the Finance Ministry has issued directions to all the Departments, which have generated liabilities, to immediately complete the facilities as per the relaxed norms and one-time exemptions announced by the Government for current financial year, for the payments.
Sources, however, maintained that all kind of relaxations and exemptions for clearing the bills, will be for one-time only for the current financial year of 2017-18 and that for future, the Departments would have to ready themselves to completely switch over to new mechanism of fiscal reforms and financial discipline, which have been made part of the legislation.
The Government proposed to minimize expenditures to avoid any irregularities at the fag end of financial year. Earlier, it was found that that officials and officers of Public Health Engineering (PHE) and Public Works Department (PWD) were creating major hurdles in switching over to PAO mechanism by not uploading bills notwithstanding the fact that they have been given advanced training to this effect, thus, trying to virtually ‘sabotage’ the Government’s transparency system, aimed at confining last month’s expenditure to bare minimum to check the “last moment irregularities”.
Asserting that the concerned officials and officers had been briefed very clearly that the State Government will be very liberal and could condone minor mistakes as this was first financial year with the new system and that even some conditions could be relaxed to run the system smoothly, sources said despite such an assurance some of the officials had worked against the system.
“There can be no going back on the new system. It has to be implemented as it was the only way out to put an end to the irregularities committed in passing the bills during last month of the financial year,” sources said, adding that the new system is part of the Finance Department’s list of enforcing discipline in spending and the Government will go ahead with it. Only few relaxations and exemptions have been given for the ongoing financial year, which was at the fag end of completion.
It may be mentioned here that as part of series of financial reforms undertaken by the Finance Ministry, the expenditure during last quarter i.e. from January 1 to March 31, of the financial year has been confined to 30 per cent alone, which means the Departments had to spend 70 per cent of their budget during first three quarters of the financial year.
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