Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and State Deputy CM and Finance Minister Samrat Chaudhary.
| Photo Credit: ANI
The Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) report for the year ended March 31, 2022, presented to the Bihar Assembly on Tuesday (March 25, 2025), flagged significant flaws in several of the State’s welfare plans.
In the financial years 2017-2022, against a budget provision of ₹22,576.33 crore, 18% or ₹4,134.21 crore was not utilised, and was surrendered to the State Education Department by the universities, indicating, “unrealistic budget proposals and inadequate financial control mechanism in the Universities”, the report said, adding, “In the 11 test-checked Universities 57% posts of teaching staff were lying vacant and this shortage ranged from 49% to 86%.” “Similarly, vacancy of non-teaching staff was 56% in these Universities,” the report said.
In a paragraph on ‘Welfare of Building and Other Construction Workers’, the report said “The government framed Bihar Building and Other Construction Workers Rules (BBOCW Rules) with a delay of nine years.”
The report also said the Bihar Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board had been constituted after a delay of 28 months, and the Board and the State Advisory Committee had not been reconstituted after February 2015.
The report further said that the Board had not prepared its budgets during the financial years 2017-2022, and, “There was a large accumulation of funds amounting to ₹1,650.06 crore as on March 31, 2022.”
Flagging flaws in the implementation of the Neer Nirmal Pariyojana, the CAG report said: “As per the project implementation plan (PIP), the schemes were to be completed in three batches up to March 2017, March 2019 and March 2020 respectively. However, none of the batches completed all its phases till December 2022.”
“As per the PIP, the World Bank was to contribute approx. ₹803.00 crore (50% of the project cost) to the project. Due to delays in implementation and less expenditure till March 2020, Government of Bihar received only ₹326.10 crore and was deprived of World Bank assistance amounting to ₹476.90 crore,” the report said. “Neer Nirmal Pariyojana funds of ₹64.21 crore had been diverted towards payment of Operations and Maintenance (O&M) and non-eligible schemes,” the report said.
“Expenditure of ₹4.89 crore on construction of sub-divisional hospitals at Majhoul (Begusarai) could not yield any benefits as the constructed building was deteriorating on being left abandoned and idle for the last 10 years,” the report said in the paragraph on ‘Audit’. “Construction of High Level Bridge by Rural Works Division, Barh (Patna), without ensuring the availability of eligible habitations and land, led to idle expenditure of ₹3.33 crore and Bihar Rural Roads Department Agency availed loan at higher rates of interest, leading to avoidable payments of ₹7.08 crore,” the report added.
“The Neera project was initiated without proper planning and assessing its viability, which led to idle expenditure of ₹11.68 crore on unused buildings and plants and machinery, avoidable expenditure of ₹1.10 crore on purchase of Refrigerated Vans and loss of ₹2.03 crore on production of jaggery,” the report said.
Published – March 25, 2025 08:54 pm IST