Final day of Meghalaya’s Cherry Blossom Fest to begin after Church services

Organizers directed to adjust timeline of Cherry Blossom Fest

Staff Reporter

Shillong, Oct 26: The state government has directed the organizers of the upcoming Shillong Cherry Blossom Festival to start the programme scheduled on November 19, after church service following opposition of its conclusion on a Sunday.

Informing this today, Deputy Chief Minister in-charge of Home (Police) Prestone Tynsong also assured that the government will ensure that next year the festival will not be held on a Sunday.

“See if you talk about Sunday or Saturday or Friday see sometimes it happens the last day sometimes it happens it ends on Sunday or may be the starting it happens on Sunday or Saturday or Friday. Let me just assure the people of the State this is not that we really wanted to do it during Sunday but this is a programme of 3-4 days so it happened that it ended on a Sunday,” Tynsong said while adding “What we decided is we have already instructed even those organizers for this time since it ended on Sunday let the function start maybe after 3 pm in the afternoon of Sunday let it start after the church service.”

“I would appeal to everybody to let us be cool and calm and we will see from next year onwards to calculate the date accordingly so that everybody is happy and everybody is also benefited out of this festival,” he added further.

Tourism Minister Paul Lyngdoh had recently stated that there is a political motive behind opposition against the festival.

Tynsong however said there is nothing wrong in people expressing their sentiments about the issue.

“I would like to say that this is the sentimental step because it is so sentimental. People I think you understand well here it is known as a Christian state. Some of our church leaders or even members of the NGOs they have that sentiment, I appreciate that sentiment no doubt about it, from the government side I don’t say it is wrong it is right but for this festival which is going to happen next month I have already told you for the ending part to adjust accordingly, we have decided, we already ask the organizers to start the function only after the church service,” the deputy chief minister said even as he concluded by saying “We are all sinners, God have mercy on us 24×7 including you.”

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).