AHMEDABAD: The 2024 CAG report on Gujarat’s Border Area Development Programme (BADP) has exposed glaring irregularities, negligence, and critical lapses by the state home department. Tabled in the Gujarat Legislative Assembly, the report uncovers deep-rooted flaws in project execution.
Over six years (2016-17 to 2021-22), auditors scrutinised 958 cases across 158 border villages in Banaskantha, Kutch, and Patan, revealing a pattern of mismanagement and oversight failures. The CAG report, tabled in the Gujarat Assembly on Friday, has ripped apart Gujarat’s Border Area Development Programme (BADP), exposing glaring inefficiencies, financial mismanagement, and systemic neglect.
Designed to uplift remote villages along the international border, BADP aimed to saturate these areas with essential infrastructure. Yet, not a single village has been declared ‘saturated’ since the programme’s inception, signalling a fundamental failure in execution.
From planning to implementation, deficiencies run deep. The home department, tasked with executing BADP in Banaskantha, Kutch, and Patan, failed to conduct baseline surveys, leaving critical gaps in physical and social infrastructure unidentified. There was no village-wise action plan, no defined criteria for ‘saturation,’ and no strategic prioritisation of villages in consultation with the Border Security Force (BSF). As a result, all 158 border villages in the first phase (0-10 km) remain underdeveloped.
Decision-making processes were equally flawed. District-level plans were discussed only five times between 2016-21, while the State Level Screening Committee (SLSC) failed to meet as required for the 2017-18 and 2018-19 Annual Action Plans (AAPs).
The department consistently missed deadlines for AAP submissions from 2016-17 to 2020-21, delaying project execution and completion. The absence of structured planning led to ad-hoc project selection without proper justification.
Ineffective coordination resulted in missed convergence with other schemes, work cancellations due to feasibility issues, land acquisition delays, and underutilised assets. Health, capacity building, skill development, and sanitation sectors remained neglected between 2016-17 and 2019-20. The situation worsened in 2020-21 and 2021-22 when no work was undertaken due to government restrictions.
Financial irregularities were rampant. The department violated statutory norms, executing inadmissible works, bypassing tendering rules, and making excessive or irregular payments to contractors. Shockingly, 133 approved projects worth Rs 20.09 crore were scrapped without the Centre’s approval, only to be replaced with 50 new works worth Rs 22.93 crore. Further, 20 projects amounting to Rs 8.87 crore, executed between 2016-17 and 2019-20, directly contravened BADP guidelines.
Seven contracts totalling Rs 6.43 crore, each exceeding Rs 5 lakh, were awarded without open tendering. Liquidated damages worth Rs 37.93 lakh were never recovered from contractors, while training programmes were riddled with duplicate candidates and trainers, leading to excess payments for unexecuted works.
Asset tracking was nonexistent. BADP funds were diverted for maintaining non-BADP assets, while utilisation certificates (UCs) worth Rs 54.07 crore for 2017-20 remained pending, blocking Gujarat’s access to Rs 6.28 crore in central funds. Meanwhile, bureaucratic delays forced the surrender of 16.79 per cent of BADP funds to the state’s finance department.
Rs 125.02 crore was released with delays ranging from one to 340 days, while Rs 29.79 crore across 12 implementing agencies remained unutilised. Adding to the financial mismanagement, Rs 2.06 crore in earned interest was wrongly deposited as state receipts instead of being reinvested in BADP projects.
Monitoring was virtually nonexistent. The department failed to appoint nodal officers, quarterly reports were delayed by up to 82 days, and third-party inspections occurred one to six years after project completion. Social audits were completely ignored, and not a single meeting of the SLSC was held between 2016-22 to review BADP progress. The DLCs, meant to conduct regular evaluations, convened just once between 2016-19.
With glaring lapses across every stage—planning, execution, financial management, and oversight—BADP in Gujarat has turned into a textbook case of administrative failure. The report underscores an urgent need for accountability, structural reforms, and a complete overhaul of governance mechanisms to prevent further misuse of public funds.
Critical lapses flagged by CAG
The CAG report has laid bare alarming lapses in Gujarat’s Border Area Development Programme (BADP), exposing financial mismanagement and project failures. In Banaskantha’s Radosan village, Rs 53.28 lakh was spent between September 2017 and August 2018 to construct 500 individual toilets—260 in Padan and 240 in another location. Yet, inspections revealed stark failures: After checking nine Padan toilets at the site, three had been washed away in the 2017 floods, and two lacked doors, signalling a severe waste of public funds.
Further deepening the controversy, the report highlights an exhibition in Dhordo, Kutch, in November 2020, where event management agencies and resorts participated. The Centre had explicitly instructed Gujarat not to divert BADP funds for this event, with the state pledging to cover expenses itself. However, the home department flouted these directives, spending Rs 6.27 crore from BADP funds in 2021-22 and 2022-23, raising serious accountability concerns.
Auditors also flagged irregularities in project execution. Out of 958 planned works, 282 underwent review, exposing 20 projects worth Rs 8.87 crore that bypassed norms set by the Government of India. Despite initial rejections—Rs 15 lakh in Kutch, Rs 56 lakh in Banaskantha-Kutch, and Rs 35 lakh in Patan—these projects were forcefully pushed through.
Violations extended to tendering as well. Government norms mandate tenders for projects ranging from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 30 lakh, yet the home department disregarded this framework, awarding seven contracts worth Rs 6.43 crore without open bidding—further solidifying concerns over procedural misconduct and financial opacity.
