BHUBANESWAR: The Comptroller and Auditor General has detected serious financial impropriety involving a cash transfer of Rs 782.26 crore to 12.72 lakh ineligible beneficiaries under Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA), a flagship scheme launched by the previous BJD government just before the simultaneous elections to the Assembly and Lok Sabha.
The compliance audit report on KALIA tabled in the Assembly on Wednesday by Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi said the Agriculture department had released Rs 6,444.30 crore to 65.64 lakh beneficiaries during 2019-21 under two components - ‘Support to cultivators for cultivation’ and ‘Livelihood support for landless agricultural households’. Only three out of five instalments were released to beneficiaries under the first component as of March 2021.
“The department had provided KALIA benefit assistance to 65.64 lakh beneficiaries during 2019-21 and released instalments thrice to 41.64 lakh beneficiaries, twice to 8.09 lakh beneficiaries and once to 15.91 lakh beneficiaries. This happened due to identification of 9.76 lakh ineligible beneficiaries while implementing the scheme,” the report said. The audit also analysed the KALIA database with reference to other databases like SECC, VAHAN, IFMS and HRMS and identified another 2.96 lakh ineligible beneficiaries, bringing their total number to 12.72 lakh. The department had transferred Rs 782.26 crore to these 12.72 lakh ineligible beneficiaries with remote chances of recovery, it added.
The report further said payment of Rs 107.64 crore was released to 1.28 lakh account holders whose names were different from the names of beneficiaries indicating payment to unauthorised persons. Release of three instalments to 14.04 lakh landless agricultural labourers without imparting necessary training and capacity building defeated the scheme objectives, the report said. Of the total disbursement of Rs 9,333.01 crore, an amount of Rs 2,060.29 crore pertaining to the year 2021-22 could not be analysed in absence of data and information.
“There were critical inconsistencies in the database like changes in names of beneficiaries, bank account number and farmer category in master table to that of applications without logs and audit trails of transactions leading to lack of integrity of data,” the audit said.
There was no input control or validation in the data entry form to prevent duplicities and junk entries. The audit noticed that after the transactions were completed and recorded, vital data were again manually updated without any log or audit trail resulting in an inconsistent, unreliable and disintegrated database.