CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government did not establish proposed gender budget cells in all departments to facilitate the integration of gender analysis into the Budget, stated the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report tabled at the Assembly on Tuesday.
Only three departments - Rural Development & Panchayat Raj, Agricultural & Farmers Welfare, and Cooperation, Food & Consumer Protection - contained created gender budget cells as of September 2023, besides a nodal gender budgeting statement in the Finance Department.
This led to the gender budgeting statements not being prepared holistically, said the report, leading to non-allocation of funds to handlooms and textile sector in the gender budgeting statement, even though TN ranked fourth in India in the number of women handloom workers as per the All India Handloom Census 2019-20.
In the gender budget statement 2022-2023, the budget provisions for schemes, including the Nirbhaya scheme which had a budget provision of Rs 71.3 crore, were fully withdrawn resulting in ‘nil’ expenditure, establishing the “poor implementation of these nationally-important schemes despite availability of funds,” the report added.