Govt still waiting for Centre on ILP
Staff Reporter
Shillong, Sep 20: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma today said the State government is still waiting for the response from the Centre on the resolution adopted by the Assembly for implementation of the inner line permit (ILP) in Meghalaya.
“The State government has been consistently following it up with the union home ministry on the issue of ILP and the State is waiting for the response from the Government of India on the matter,” Sangma told the Assembly.
Replying to a zero-hour notice, Sangma informed that a State delegation led by him had also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on August 8, urging his intervention into the various issues concerning the State which include implementation of the ILP.
He said that the State government had also submitted a memorandum on the matter to the Union Home Minister Amit Shah during his visit to the State in 2021.
Sangma said that the demand for ILP grew louder in Meghalaya after the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) by the Centre.
In view of this, the State Assembly had adopted the official resolution for the implementation of ILP in 2019. The resolution was sent to the MHA on December 23, 2019 followed by a reminder on November 17, 2020.
ADCs fail to submit UCs on central schemes
The autonomous district councils (ADCs) have failed to submit pending utilization certificates (UCs) for the implementation of various development schemes sanctioned by the Centre during 2017 – 2022.
Out of the grants of Rs 385.71 crore received as central grants during 2017-22, the ADCs could submit UCs for only Rs 129.63 crore (34%) of the total fund allotted, said the State Finances Audit Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India for the year ended March 31, 2022.
Non-submission of the UCs means that the authorities have not explained as to how funds were spent over the years or they were not spent, it said.
The CAG has suggested that the ADCs may be advised to submit the pending UCs.
Meanwhile, the report said that the annual accounts of the ADCs were in arrears for two to six years.
The outstanding annual accounts of the KHADC were from 2020-21 to 2021-22, JHADC from 2019-20 to 2021-22 and GHADC from 2016-17 to 2021-22.
As per the Fund Rules of JHADC and GHADC, the annual accounts were to be submitted to the PAG (Audit) by June 30 of each year but no prescribed date was mentioned in the Fund Rules of the KHADC.
The CAG said that persistent delay in the finalization of accounts is fraught with the risk of fraud and leakage of public money going undetected. It recommended that the state government may advise the ADCs to finalise the arrear accounts and submit them to the Principal Accountant General (Audit).