AP misclassified finances, says CAG

New Delhi: The minister of state for finance, Pankaj Chowdhary, on Saturday said that the CAG had certainly found several financial irregularities and diversion of funds from the Centre by the AP government between 2019-20. He sent his reply to a Zero Hour query of TDP MP K Rammohan Naidu on state finances.

The letter dated March 12 from the minister's office and placed on record on Saturday states that the CAG report said an amount of Rs 3,371.60 crore had been misclassified as capital expenditure in the accounts for 2019-20 under the YSR Gruha Vasati programme. He said necessary corrective action had to be taken by the state government in this regard as well as in other instances where Central funds meant for a specific purpose had been diverted to the state government schemes, etc.,

In addition, according to the 2019-20 socio-economic survey report of AP for the Protected Areas, the government had planned to provide housing for all the poor and to register the land with houses for women in the households for the above scheme. "Since the land and house will be registered in the name of the beneficiary, the property will belong to the beneficiary, not the Government of AP (GoAP), and therefore expenditures must be booked as revenue expenditure. In addition, expenditures of Rs 1,007.74 crore incurred for small works and grants in-aid, which are not assets created in nature, are also accounted for under the capital head", the reply pointed out.

"We would like to further inform you that the GoAP received an amount of Rs. 324.15 crore as the Central Share of SDRF and an amount of Rs. 570.91 crore under NDRF from Government of India. As per the CAG's Report on State Finances of Andhra Pradesh for the year ended March, 2020, an amount of Rs 1,100 crore was transferred" to deposit account of directorate of agriculture, Andhra Pradesh towards payment of input subsidy to farmers for kharif as gratuitous relief. This amount of Rs.1,100 crore was again transferred to the personal deposit account of commissioner, directorate of agriculture, Andhra Pradesh, on March 31, 2020".

"The CAG's report includes that the state government transferred Rs 1,100 crore to the personal deposit account by showing expenditure as disaster relief and rehabilitation in violation of the Appropriation Act. Further, the entire expenditure transferred to PD Account was adjusted from SDRF, by showing it as deduct expenditure in violation of SDBF accounting procedure. Thus, booking the expenditure without actually incurring it raised questions about the accuracy of expenditure figures of the state".