AP Government refutes TDP charge of 'unaccounted' spending

Amaravati: The state government has dismissed the reports of violations in the payments made to the tune of Rs 40,000 crore by it to the contractors. Citing reports to this effect in some sections, the principal finance secretary, S S Rawat, said here on Friday that there was no diversion or mismanagement of funds in any way in the transfer of the money.

Rawat said the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) only had made certain observations in his audit and referred those to the AP finance department for remarks as part of the usual practice. The issue involved 10,806 bills amounting to Rs 41,043. 08 crore that were drawn under the special bills category. The issue was all about the codal provisions across all treasury units, he said.

The observations in this regard had arisen due to the adjustment transactions alone, Rawat said. Some funds that could not be utilised had lapsed as per the rules and then some adjustments had to be made among the personal deposit accounts. In addition, there were issues like rectification of the accounting unit of expenditure and reprocessing of failed payments and adjustments of TDS to the GSTIN, etc., because of which the audit had merely passed some observations.

This was a normal practice and the state government usually explained its stand in due course and the issue was done with. Reiterating that there was no irregularity at all, Rawat said all the transactions had been carried out as per the procedure and as per the provisions of the AP Treasury and Financial Code (every state government has its codes).

The clarification comes in the backdrop of allegations by the TDP that the government had diverted the funds. The party said unless the factual position was explained to the CAG, it could grossly affect the image of the State and asked the government to come clean on the same.