By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, March 4: The Meghalaya government treated the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) like a personal discretionary account, illegally diverting over Rs 2.15 crore to fund donations to other states and even pay for the cleaning of the Shillong Secretariat, according to a scathing CAG report.
A test check of records from the Revenue and Disaster Management Department revealed that Rs 2 crore was transferred to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund (CMRF) without the mandatory approval of the State Executive Committee (SEC). In a move that fundamentally breaches financial guidelines, Rs 1 crore of this amount was categorized as a “loan” to the CMRF. The SDRF is a tied fund with strict usage rules; it does not function as a lending facility for other government accounts.
The audit noted that while the funds were used for high-profile donations—Rs 1 crore to the Kerala CM’s Relief Fund and another Rs 1 crore for Cyclone ‘FANI’ victims in Odisha—the disbursements deviated entirely from prescribed expenditure items. While framed as a noble cause, the CAG clarified that using restricted emergency funds for such donations is inadmissible and violates the legal safeguards of disaster management.
The diversion extended to administrative maintenance as well. In March 2020, the department transferred Rs 15.45 lakh from the SDRF to the Secretariat Administration Department for the sanitization of public areas within the Shillong Secretariat. The CAG flagged this as a direct contravention of guidelines, as disaster funds are intended for victims of natural calamities, not for scrubbing government offices.
In its response in October 2023, the department admitted the funds were used for inadmissible items and stated it would take up the matter with the SEC for “regularisation”—an attempt to retroactively validate the illegal expenditure. However, as of February 2024, no update on the status of this regularisation or the recoupment of funds has been communicated, suggesting the government has yet to rectify the fiscal breach.
