Revenue worth Rs 1012.19 crore yet to be realised by M’laya
SHILLONG: An alleged lackadaisical approach on the part of the State’s Power, Taxation and Finance departments, has resulted in the State Government losing revenue worth several crores of rupees, which otherwise could have been utilized in clearing the pending dues of NEEPCO and other power companies, both public and private.
A case in point is the huge loss of revenue while conducting lottery schemes, both online and on paper in the State.
While the State Government suffered a loss of Rs. 977.19 crore for operating paper lottery, the pending dues of MS Associates (belonging to a former Congress M.P. from Assam) for running online lottery is Rs. 35 crore. As the total pending dues with power companies amount to less than Rs. 500 crore, the revenue from the lottery should have been sufficient to clear the power dues.
As per the CAG report of 2008, the State Government had fixed the revenue per draw for paper lottery at an abnormally low rate of Rs. 600 instead of Rs 3,000, and this resulted in a loss of Rs. 977.19 crore to the state exchequer. The Government had entered into agreements with five distributors to run paper lottery in the State.
Adding to the problem, the non-submission of quarterly audited statements by three paper lottery distributors also resulted in huge loss of revenue in terms of crores of rupees.
Since the State Government did not fix the due date to deposit the sale proceeds of each draw, the five distributors paid only Rs. 10.63 crore out of Rs 30.59 crore payable up to March 2007.
Besides the failure of the Government to stipulate the due date of payment of the sale proceeds, there was absence of a penal clause in the agreement. This resulted in lottery dealers taking advantage of the situation and the Government could not get back the dues due to the faulty agreement.
Following the anomalies, the CAG had asked the Government to set up an independent audit wing to examine the losses.
As far as online lottery deal was concerned, for the last 12 years (since 2002), the State Government failed to recover dues worth Rs. 35 crore from MS Associates though the same government officials were persons in charge of Taxation, Power and Finance.
The Government only sent reminders to MS Associates and did not dare to file any case against the company to get back the pending dues.
The audit report of the CAG in this regard in 2008 had said that during the four years of operation from 2002 to 2005 as per the amended agreement, the distributor was liable to pay the revenue of Rs. 54.08 crore according to the terms of the agreement with the State government, but out of this, only Rs. 19 crore was paid by the distributor leaving an unpaid balance of Rs. 35.08 crore.
As per the CAG report, the distributor of online lottery arbitrarily suspended all draws with effect from December 1, 2005, resulting in huge loss of revenue to the State.
With the suspension of online lottery operation in 2005, the minimum guaranteed amount of Rs. 16 crore to be paid to the Government from December 2005 to March 2007 could not be realized.
There was no penal clause in the agreement to recover the loss because of arbitrary suspension of draws and moreover, the Government was not in a position to take any action against the distributor and also to recover the balance amount.
The 10-year deal with MS Associates to operate the online lottery in the State ended on August 22, 2012.