Chennai: A special task force set up by the Tamilnadu government to identify unutilised funds lying idle with various departments, state-run organisations, statutory institutions and local bodies, but kept outside the treasury, has unearthed over Rs 1,946 crore. These funds can be immediately remitted back to the government account, said Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan.
Speaking to the media at the Secretariat, he said as mentioned in the budget speech for 2021-22, the special task force was constituted to reconcile, identify and access the funds of the government departments, government run societies, statutory institutions, local bodies kept outside the treasury, within a particular timeframe.
The task force has collected and collated information broadly under the categories of available balances, liabilities and to be remitted into government accounts separately under each of the closed schemes, ongoing schemes and receipts of the Department, he said and added: Through this process, from the data so far collected, the special task force has traced a sum of about Rs 1,946.31 crore that can be immediately remitted back to the Government Account.
‘This is just a trailer. Expect a lot more funds to be unearthed,’ he said, adding: ‘Many thousand bank accounts are under scrutiny. The final number will be many ‘Xs’. It will be a big number,’ he added. The task force will be given extension till 31 March, 2022 to complete the work.
In his budget speech early this year, the Finance Minister had said that Government funds are often shifted to accounts outside the view of the Treasury system and the government will establish a special task group under the senior officers of the Finance Department to fully reconcile the accounts and identify funds which have lapsed and which still be utilised.
The Minister said that a similar analysis of crop loan and jewel loan data of co-operative banks has led to the unearthing of several irregularities.
‘For instance, the same person has taken multiple loans from multiple societies for the same small piece of agricultural land. At some places jewel loans have been given without any jewels being pledged.All such issues will be effectively addressed by this new approach,’ he added.