Unnecessary supplementary grants are budgetary irregularities, the report of the Principal Accountant General (Accounts and Entitlement) - I, a body under the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, has said on out of regular budget funds from the previous fiscal. Incidentally, the report was tabled on December 30, 2022, during the Winter Session of the state legislature where the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government presented the highest-ever supplementary demands worth Rs 52,327 crore for 2022-23. According to the Finance Accounts and Appropriation Accounts of Maharashtra government, supplementary grants worth Rs 23,142.25 crore proved to be unnecessary in 2021-22. “An avoidable extra provision in an estimate is as much a budgetary irregularity as an excess in the sanctioned expenditure," the report noted. It added that major defaulting departments that had not submitted utilisation certificates (UCs) during 2021-22 are urban development (Rs 13,645.33 crore), school education and sports (Rs 7,750.21 crore), planning (Rs 4,723.17 crore), rural development and water conservation (Rs 3.029.19 crore) and tribal development (Rs 2.220.48 crore). As per Bombay Financial Rules, 1959, UCs in respect of grants-in-aid received by the grantee should be furnished to the authority that sanctioned it within 12 months from the date of receipt of grant or before applying for a further grant, whichever is earlier. To the extent of non-submission of UCs, there is a risk that the amount shown in finance accounts may not have reached the beneficiaries. The report noted that Maharashtra had a revenue deficit of Rs 16,374.32 crore while the state's fiscal deficit was Rs 64,301.86 crore (2.01 per cent of Gross State Domestic Product of Rs 31,97,782 crore). During the Covid-19 pandemic, the revenue deficit was Rs 41,142 crore in 2020-21. The state, however, registered an improvement in its total public debt despite an increase to Rs 4,83,035 crore in 2021-22, which was 15 per cent of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) in comparison to the previous fiscal when the public debt of Rs 4,28,482 crore – 16 per cent of the GSDP. Maharashtra also showed improvement in collection of Sales Tax/VAT (Rs 45,924 crore in 2021-22 compared to Rs 33,160 crore in 2020-21), state excise (increased to Rs 17,221 crore from Rs 15,089 crore) and taxes of vehicles (increase to Rs 9,080 crore from Rs 6,655 crore).
