Patna: The Comptroller and Auditor General detected financial irregularities of over Rs 10,000 crore in Bihar government departments during the financial year 2012-13.
“During our audit we detected financial management deficiencies in every government department functioning in Bihar. This has led to the detection of irregularities worth over Rs 10,000 crore in the state,” Accountant General (Audit), Bihar, P K Singh said.
Among them was the non-delivery of 25.58 lakh quintal of ‘custom milled rice' against 2.14 crore quintal of paddy released to rice mill owners in advance in 38 districts. This resulted in a loss of Rs 433.94 crore to the government.
“This loss was incurred because the Food and Consumer Protection Department did not follow the prescribed rules. According to the rules, the rice-mill owners had to provide 67 quintal rice to the Food Corporation of India and in return the state government was to release 100 quintals of paddy,” Singh said.
“In several instances paddy was given to mill owners without taking rice from them. Many of the mill owners defaulted and the state government suffered a loss of Rs 433.94 crore. This was a major financial irregularity we detected,” Singh said.
The CAG mentioned irregularity in the crop insurance scheme under the Cooperative Department. The state government suffered a loss of Rs 152 crore as insurance money was disbursed to persons who had not even sown crops.
“We procured block-wise data and then compared it with various other figures to detect this irregularity in the Cooperative Department. The officials of the concerned department also accepted that insurance worth Rs 152 crore was given wrongly,” he said.
The CAG report said the wheat procurement percentage by the Cooperative Department fell from 98 per cent in 2008-09 to 35 per cent in 2012-13. However, it did well in the matter of paddy procurement, fulfilling more than its target.
The report also included Rs 7,900 crore outstanding advances till March 2013 against the implementing agencies of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in its assessment of total financial irregularities.
It said that scrutiny of records disclosed that several districts had not even maintained the recipients' name and status of receipt of previous advances.
The report also said that the government stated that outstanding advances were the biggest challenge for the Bihar Education Project Council, which implemented SSA and the advances were reduced to Rs 4,089 crore in October 2013.
