THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With money hard to come by in the post GST phase, the finance department has imposed stringent conditions for submitting proposals for the final batch of supplementary demands for grants (SDG), additional funds sought above the budgeted amount, that will be moved during the coming budget session in January 2018. The finance department, with the severity of a 'karyasthan' dealing with serfs in a feudal household, will ask tough questions to department heads before loosening its purse strings.
Here are some of the posers that would be hurled at department heads. Why has the need for additional expenditure arisen? Why was it not foreseen at the time of the preparation of the budget estimates for 2017-2018? 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. If these can be answered to the satisfaction of the finance department, there will be trickier posers like 'why can't the expenditure be postponed?'. "The idea is to kill unnecessary demands," a top finance department official said.
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. Take for instance the Rs 26.60 crore supplementary grants obtained to compensate KSEB for writing off KWA's electricity charges. None of it was utilised. Or for instance, the Rs 16 crore obtained for campaign against alcoholism. More than Rs 13 crore was surrendered.
