NEW DELHI: Keeping the general elections in mind, the Finance Ministry has sought a report on expenditure from all the ministries and also progress report on all the flagship projects of the government including Swachh Bharat, Standup India and Smart Cities Mission.
“Despite budgetary allocations made by the Finance Ministry, some of the ministries have not spent well. Their performances have been below expectation. The Finance Ministry is taking stock of all the flagship programmes, their budgetary allocations and expenditure,” said a senior official from the department of expenditure.
The Prime Minister had launched several programmes, including Swachh Bharat, Smart Cities Mission, Standup India, Make in India, Startup India, Namami Gange to name a few, in the last four years under the aegis of various ministries.The ministries have been asked to submit the reports before March 31. The move comes after reports of irregularities in expenditure under various ministries, some of which reportedly went overboard to spend on advertisement, while their actual project expenditure was low.
“There are ministries that have spent so much over conclaves and events, but their actual expenditure on projects are quite low,” the official said.Some projects, such as the Namami Gange project, were most disappointing, sources add, despite the government being generous with their budget.
Even the Swachh Bharat Mission and Smart Cities Mission, despite being given a firm push from the government, have been confined to only six or seven cities.According to the official, some ministries were focusing more on advertisements and events rather than on actual implementation of projects and the ministry had sought a separate report on ad expenditure. Last week the Finance Ministry had requested other ministries and departments to provide year-wise details of expenditure on advertisements in papers and magazines for procurement issued by them.It had also directed the ministries and departments to provide the number of year-wise tenders where newspaper advertisements have not been made by them in accordance with government guidelines.