Shining Gujarat model claims go down drain

Shining Gujarat model claims go down drain

FPJ BureauUpdated: Saturday, June 01, 2019, 10:09 AM IST
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Gandhinagar :  A politician in power is a person who tries to pick up mercury with a fork and terms his failure at it as a landmark public endeavour. The CAG’s report, which was tabled in the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha on the last day of the budget session on Friday, has lifted the veil off the globally acclaimed Gujarat Model of Governance.

This is the period covering the last leg of Narendra Modi’s stewardship of Gujarat before he moved to Centre after a 12-year-long stint in the state.

In five different audit reports for the year ended march 2013, the CAG has disputed transactions totaling Rs 25,000 crores. Some salient features on the observations would be of interest. But of much greater interest is the light it throws on how Gujarat managed to turn a revenue surplus state in 2011-12 and 2012-13.

The revenue surplus of Rs 5570 crores in 2012-13, according to the CAG, is overstated. ‘‘Gujarat government wrongly booked expenditure of Rs 881 crore on account of grant-in-aid and expenditure of Rs 202.27 crore on subsidy resulting in overstatement of revenue surplus to the tune of Rs 1088.57 crore,” the nation’s auditor points out.

It also notes that cheques worth Rs 2667 crore were not encashed as on March 31, 2013, leading to overstate-ment of expenditure.

The fiscal profligacy and rising debt burden was a sore point with the Modi government in Gujarat but was all along papered over by a high blitz publicity campaign harping on the stellar developmental works underway.

The cat is out of the bag now. During the Keshubhai Patel led first BJP government, which came to power in Gujarat in 1995, the fiscal liabilities stood at around Rs 50,000 crores. ‘‘The liability rose to Rs 1.05 lakh crores in 2008-2009 and is Rs 1.66 lakh crores in 2012-13,’’ states the CAG, warning that increasing fiscal liabilities may lead to an unsustainable debt in the medium to long term.

The tales of turnaround of major state public sector undertakings notwithstanding, the losses of about Rs 4892 crores incurred by them have come under the scrutiny of the central watchdog body. ‘‘It was controllable”, the CAG laments.

Even in the matter of the state revenues, the CAG has pointed out cases of non-or short levy, short realization, underassessment of loss of revenue, incorrect computation, concealment and suppression of turnover — all irregularities — worth Rs 5411 crores — over the last five years. ‘‘Even after the irregularities were pointed out the government accepted only 2.93 per cent of the observations and made a recovery of

only 0.17 per cent,’’ the report states.

The CAG has drawn attention to the fact that in 1999-2000 and 2011-12 grants totaling Rs 13,049.67 crores remained unutilized. The Gujarat Maritime Board and the Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam, both state public sector bodies, provided undue benefits to Reliance Petroleum (Rs 649.29 crores) and to Essar Power (Rs 587.50 crores); also the non-monitoring of construction quay at Adani group owned Mundra Port led to short recovery of Rs 118.12 crores. The Modi establishment in Gujarat has been mostly praised for its encouraging policy of solar power generation. The CAG report critically states that this push has cost the state exchequer Rs 473 crores in 2012-13 alone. ‘‘The government approved development of solar projects far in excess resulting in purchase of 1139 million units of solar power in 2012-13, as against the stipulated 686.23million units, leading to an excess burden of Rs 473.20 crores.’’

In the period after 2001, when Modi came to power in the state, the corridors of the state secretariat, which were transparently open to media, gradually turned opaque and then virtually out of bounds. Leaks of information to the media were probed and plugged with great effort. Officers found themselves summarily punished if suspected to be passing on information. The only version available was the one put out by the government. Even in the matter of asking questions in the Assembly, BJP legislators were found to be submitting blank signed forms which were then filled up with questions whose answers would pay encomiums to the stellar work of the ruling establishment. The details of the MOUs signed during Modi’s grand international foray – the Global Investors summit — and the actual figures of the implemented projects were put under tight wraps and are still not available. There is a visible relaxation, however, under the new government. The stressed government employees are slowly beginning to relax, though it will take quite some time before this becomes clearly visible. For the moment, it is official now with the government admitting in the vidhan sabha that the figure of malnourished children stands at 8.44 lakhs. Interestingly, Gujarat’s claim that it was number one in the country in implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme also stands disputed. Gujarat had claimed a completion rate of 77 per cent of MNREGA work in the state. The MNREGA official website puts it at 42.1. per cent. That is one more claim down the “chute!

R K MISRA

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