TN's special task force finds Rs 2,000 crore in unused state funds, govt to remit it back to treasury

Finance Minister Palanivel Thiagarajan said that the Rs 2,000 crore identified was just a "trailer" (Image credit: PTI)

A special task force constituted by the DMK government in Tamil Nadu has found nearly ₹2,000 crore in unused funds with various departments and agencies.

Informing this at a press briefing in Chennai on Monday, the state Finance Minister Palanivel Thiagarajan said efforts were on to remit this back to the treasury.

In his budget speech for 2021-22, he had announced the setting up of a Special Task Force to reconcile, identify and access the funds of the government departments, government-run societies, statutory institutions, local bodies kept outside the Treasury.

The details of bank accounts in which government money was parked as on March 31, 2021, were collected from multiple sources such as banks, district collectors, government departments and other quasi-governmental entities. The Special Task Force also had several interactions with government departments and state- level bankers’ committees so as to build a reliable database for the purpose, he said.

“By this process, from the data so far collected, the Special Task Force has tracked a sum of Rs 1946.31 crore that can be immediately remitted back to the government account,” a release said.

“The committee has to continue its work with auditing the reported data, specifically under the categories of ‘Available balances’ and ‘Liabilities’ and reconciling the data collected from the heads of department, district collectors and the banks. It is possible that further amounts of unutilised funds could also be identified for return to the government treasury,” a finance ministry note said.

The Special Task Force has been given an extension up to 31st March, 2022. Further, it has been directed to undertake field-based audit and reconciliation.

Preventive measures

The minister said it was important to put in place a mechanism to prevent the recurrence of such instances of funds idling in the future. He felt that direct disbursal of funds from the government treasury to the ultimate beneficiary would ensure that there was no idling of funds of a substantial portion of the budget.

According to the minister, the Economic Advisory Council to the Chief Minister has made several important recommendations. “This includes the expansion of coverage under the old-age pension scheme, tackling the issue of learning loss amongst school students due to the COVID-19 through the Illam Thedi Kalvi programme and special packages for MSME units,” he said.

The council also supported the initiatives of the Government of Tamil Nadu in data-centric governance, he said. As part of the initiative, beneficiary-linked data bases of large government programmes such as the Public Distribution System and Old Age Pension scheme were being analysed by the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency. “Data bases, such as the Civil Registration System that maintains records of births and deaths can enable new additions (to the families)and deletions (deaths in the family) to be carried over directly to the family card database. Such automatic inclusion and deletion will be an important benefit offered to the people of the State and will result in cost efficiency and in effective programme implementation,” he said.

Analysis of crop loan and jewel loan data of co- operative banks had led to the unearthing of several irregularities. “For instance, the same person has taken multiple loans from multiple societies for the same small piece of agricultural land. At some places jewel loans have been given without any jewels being pledged. All such issues will be effectively addressed by this new approach,” he said.

“The ₹2,000 crore identified is just a trailer,” Thiagarajan said. It was possible that more such unutilised funds could be identified by the special task force, he added.

Payments bank

Thiagarajan said that the state government was readying infrastructure to set up a payments bank and would seek a licence from the Reserve Bank of India. The payments bank would help transfer benefits directly to the beneficiary.

“We are the only state till now to cut the tax on petrol this year. There have been two sides to the debate. The experts in the Economic Advisory Council said with only one State cutting the tax, people from other states can cross borders and take advantage. Tamil Nadu has one of the highest vehicle traffic,” he said.