The MDA Government is now in the habit of contesting everything that the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) points out to, from the debt burden to drop in GST collection. Following the Government clarification, the Opposition parties are expected to counter what the Government has dished out. Finally, the VPP had the audacity to question how the CAG report can be contested. The VPP has stated that the CAG is a constitutional authority and is mandated to study the financial matters of every state and also that of the central government. Every CAG report is tabled on the floor of the House and its contents debated. It’s a different matter that the Government of Meghalaya has over the decades paid scant attention to CAG reports and no attempts are made to clean up the accounting mess simply because the CAG has no punitive powers. The audit report, in brief, contains a narration of cases involving financial irregularities, losses, frauds, wasteful expenditure and comments thereon and the accuracy of budgeting control of expenditure, savings etc. The CAG provides “audit paras” criticizing public expenditures of individual departments and the ‘paras’ are developed during post-event scrutiny by the CAG staff and detailed discussions with the senior staff of the department concerned. The finalized ‘paras’ are then brought before Parliament or State Assemblies where the concerned Parliamentary Committee/Public Accounts Committee of the State Assembly that deals with the affairs of a particular ministry or department disposes of each ‘para’.
In the recently released audit report, apart from pointing to the growing debt burden the CAG also remarked that the Fiscal Deficit of the State ranged between 1,103.77 crore to Rs 2793.15 crore over the past five years with an increasing trend. Consistent and increasing Fiscal Deficit shows the State’s growing dependency on borrowings to sustain its financial operations. The outstanding liabilities reached Rs 18,422.32 crore; increased by Rs 2961.23 crore compared to the previous year. Out of the total outstanding public debt of Rs 14, 637.12 crore an amount of Rs 1592.12 crore (including interest) is payable by 2023-24 and an amount of Rs 6504.89 crore (including interest) is payable between 2024-25 and 2026-27. The question is where will the money for debt servicing come from if not from more borrowings? Then there is the case of expenditure without legislative approval in 2022—23 running into 574.74 crore with the bulk of this amount of Rs 550 crore spent on Administration of Electricity Acts and Rules, Power Department Services etc. The CAG has observed that expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of the State without legislative approval as mandated by the Constitution infringes on constitutional stipulations. This undermines fiscal discipline and the ability of the Government to control the total budget and subsequently to manage risks. Above all this affects the Government’s ability to effectively allocate resources to strategic policy priorities such as Education and Health which receive scant attention.
Surrender of funds amounting to Rs 1018.95 crore at the end of March 2023 suggests poor budget-making. However, what should make the people of Meghalaya sit up and take notice is the under-utilisation of grants in Education where only 44% was utilised and Social Welfare which utilised only 41% of the grants. The CAG observes that this under-utilisation of grants in the above two Departments would significantly impact the educational opportunities and well-being of the people. Now it is for the people of Meghalaya to read the CAG Report meticulously and not be fooled by attempts to obfuscate the Report.
