SHILLONG, Jan 30: The Cabinet on Thursday amended the Meghalaya Accounts Service Rules 1996, the Meghalaya Local Fund Audit Service Rules 1996 of the principal rules, the Amendment of Rule 5 of the Meghalaya State Electricity Regulatory Commission Rules 2003, the Meghalaya Food and Civil Supplies Rules 2001, and Meghalaya Goods and Services Act 2017.
It also increased the corpus of the contingency fund to Rs 1,000 crore.
“These are basic amendments to incorporate certain office memorandums. In some cases, certain wording and nomenclature have to be changed. In other cases, because of certain excision made by the Cabinet, some changes had to be made in the rules to comply with the decisions. These are routine amendments required in these four service rules,” Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said after the Cabinet meeting.
He said the Goods and Services Tax Council makes amendments to the GST provisions in council meetings and the states that are members of the council have to amend their respective GST Act according to the provisions cleared in the GST Council. “In our case, the Meghalaya Goods and Services Act, 2017 has to be amended through an ordinance to incorporate the changes made by the GST Council,” he added.
“Certain changes were incorporated and the ordinance was brought in to regularise the decisions made by the GST Council in the Meghalaya Goods and Services Tax 2017,” Sangma said.
He further said there was a proposal to amend and add an ordinance to the contingency fund of Meghalaya, which has been increased to Rs 1,000 crore to meet the additional demand.
The Chief Minister explained that a contingency fund means a provision within the budgetary system of the government where once the budget passed by the Assembly is exhausted for a particular department, it has to be moved through a supplementary demand to spend more if required. While the supplementary demands are to be passed by the Assembly when it is in session, the contingency fund allows that provision to be used.
“This does not mean we have a contingency fund that comes in and we increase the amount in terms of cash flow. The money is already available for expenditure but we need to move to the contingency. This provision was incorporated and an ordinance was brought to increase the contingency fund provision and raise it to Rs 1,000 crore,” he added.
Sangma also said the Cabinet decided to hand over the implementation of the Swachh Bharat Mission Gramin Plus from the Public Health Engineering to the Community and Rural Development Department. “This was suggested during a review meeting of Jal Shakti as the C&RD Department has more manpower,” he said.
He also said the Cabinet approved the recommendation of the search and selection committee headed by the Chief Secretary to appoint retired Colonel Daryl Hopkins as the director of the Sainik Board as the term of the incumbent director is ending soon.
