THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With expenditure on the rise and revenues not keeping pace, severe conditions have been imposed for submitting proposals for supplementary demands for grants (SDG) in the next Assembly session. Tough questions will be asked of department heads before the proposals are granted entry to the Assembly. “The objective is to shoot down unnecessary and speculative demands that will needlessly bloat expenditure,” a top Finance Department official said.
Department heads will be put through intense interrogation. Why has the need for additional expenditure arisen? Whether it is not possible to find the required amount or at least a part of it, by re-appropriation from the savings anticipated under the Grant? There will be tricky posers, too, questions that heads had never faced like ‘why can’t the expenditure be postponed?’.
Unlike earlier, the concerned department head will also have to provide full details of classification (major, sub major, minor, sub) and detailed Head of Account under which the Supplementary Grant is sought. The expenditure details sought are so comprehensive that a department head without an exhaustive knowledge of his subject can never provide them. It is not just enough to provide the answers, the department heads will also have to put up connected files and disposals for reference, or at least submit copies of government orders.
Supplementary demands for grants have traditionally been a big drain on the state's resources. The elaborate process is even turning out to be an unnecessary legislative exercise. The Finance Department, in an internal audit earlier, had found that nearly Rs 800 crore secured through Supplementary Demands for Grants during 2015-16 was not put to any use. Scarce resources, as a result, are deployed in the most unproductive manner. It has also been found that in a number of cases the actual expenditure (initial plan outlay plus supplementary grants) is less than even the initial outlay. “This suggests that supplementary funds were demanded when funds for actual plan projects were left underutilized,” the Finance Department official said.
