The Finance Ministry has asked all Ministries to weed out ‘infructuous or inflated’ funding requests and tap savings from their existing Budget allocations before seeking more funds for this year.
The Ministry has urged departments to ‘avoid pitfalls’ in spending that have been red-flagged by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and mooted a thorough and objective assessment of the additional money required as supplementary demands for grants.
In a memo issued on Monday, the Department of Economic Affairs has sought proposals from Ministries by November 11 for the first batch of supplementary demands to be placed in the upcoming Winter session of Parliament.
Officials in line Ministries processing the supplementary demand proposals have been instructed to ‘invariably identify savings available so that infructuous or inflated demands are weeded out and the ‘eventuality of surrender’ after obtaining supplementary grants is avoided.
Departments have been reminded about the sharp observations of the PAC in an earlier report on ‘Excess expenditure’ rapping them for a ‘tepid approach’ in preparing Budget estimates and supplementary demands marked by ‘bad planning, lack of foresight and ineffective monitoring’.
While the Finance Ministry itself has advised departments to propose supplementary demands in the Winter session in some cases, broadly, Ministries have been advised to only seek more funds in certain other cases.
These include situations where payments against Court decrees cannot be postponed, where advance from Contingency Funds has been granted, and items for which excessive spending has been permitted under the rules.
