Kolkata: Rebutting the claims of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report that the state government delayed submission of utilisation certificate (UC) of Rs 2,29,099 crore since 2002-03 to 2020-21, the state’s chief secretary BP Gopalika, on Friday, told the press that the state had submitted all the certificates and that the amount specified is incorrect.
Addressing the media, he said that the CAG report mainly specified non-submission of utilisation of certificates concerning eight departments of the state government.
“We had summoned the secretaries of all these departments and sought a report from them. On scrutinising this report we learnt that the state has submitted all the utilisation certificates till the specified date and thereafter. Had the certificates not being submitted, the state would have got further funds from the respective Union Ministries,” he claimed.
He added that utilisation certificates for a particular fiscal year are submitted in the following fiscal year or one next to that if some expenditures were made.
Further, Gopalika also refuted that utilisation certificates for an amount of Rs 2,29,099 crore were not submitted. He alleged this was incorrect since the CAG report has taken into consideration all the years starting 2022-03 and reached this amount. Hence, it is not that this amount is only for the 2020-21 financial year, he remarked.
He questioned: “If certificates were not submitted from 2002-03, then why didn’t the CAG for 20 years tell the Accountant General that these were pending and need to be submitted in the next fiscal year before another round of audit?”
Gopalika assured that the state also has copies of these certificates and are ready to submit them again if required. He also added that in the last two years about 334 Central teams visited Bengal to monitor work under various central government schemes. “The state has given answers to every query presented by these teams,” he claimed.
Recently, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi refuting the claims of the State Finance Audit Report for 2020-21 by CAG. In her letter, Banerjee wrote: “It is really shocking to note that the high office of reputed Constitutional institution like the CAG could make such observations which are incorrect and have been made without application of due diligence and examination of the procedures for submission of utilisätion certificates as per Government of India guidelines.”