Rising
Kashmir: Srinagar: Thursday, 31 December 2015.
J&K RTI
Movement and CHRI, Delhi has initiated an exercise to track the manner of
spending of public funds released by the Government of India (GoI) to the State
of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) for selective social sector programmes.
In a
statement Chairman J&K RTI Movement, Dr Shaikh Ghulam Rasool said J&K
RTI Movement has gleaned information about the funds approved for spending or
actually disbursed to J&K government for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, National
Health Mission, providing pre and post matriculation scholarship for students,
release of funds under Article 275(1) of the Constitution (grants-in-aid of
revenues), devolution of funds based on the 14th Finance Commission's
recommendations and contribution to the State's Disaster Response Fund.
“Our
preliminary research indicates disbursal of or approval for expenditure up to
Rs. 1,246.97 crore to the Government of J&K under these heads during the
current financial year. Yet there is hardly any information about the receipt
of these funds or manner of their spending on the websites of the Government of
J&K. Some of this information was obtained under RTI while the rest was
downloaded from the websites of the relevant Ministries of the GoI.
For National
Health Mission-NHM (Approved budget estimate is Rs. 667,25,51,000 for 2015-16;
Total assistance disbursed for 3 Urban infrastructure investment projects
funded partially by Asian Development Bank is Rs. 81, 57, 47,000; Funds disbursed to J&K in
lieu of deficit in Post. V -Devolution Revenue Account on the recommendations
of the 14th Finance Commission is Rs. 74,18,97,000 (@ Rs. 8.24 crore per
month); Grant-in-aid as Centre's contribution to State Disaster is Rs.
1,14,50,00,000 (disbursed in April-2015); Funds for Pre and Post-Matric
scholarship for tribal students is Rs.
31, 00, 00,000; Funds released by Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs under
Article 275(1) of the Constitution is Rs.
20,00,00,000; Funds approved for release under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
(SSA) by the Project Approval Board of Union Ministry Human Resource
Development is Rs. 258,45,15,000 for 2015-16. He said the total funds disbursed
or approved for spending amounts to Rs. 1, 246, 97, 10,000 and some data
relating to disbursal of funds was obtained through an RTI application filed by
Venkatesh Nayak, Programme Coordinator, Access to Information Programme,
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), New Delhi. Shaikh said CHRI is J&K RTI Movement's
partner of longstanding.
“This is but
a small fraction of the entire volume of funds disbursed by the Central
Government under various schemes and projects to J&K. We are working
towards identifying other schemes and programmes under which funds have been
disbursed to J&K. J&K RTI Movement has found hardly any information
about the receipt or the manner of spending of these funds on the official
websites of the J&K Government,” said Chairman J&K RTI Movement.
He said
J&K RTI Movement believes this is a complete violation of various clauses
of Section 4(1)(b) of the J&K RTI Act which require information about the
manner of spending of the budget and recipients of scholarships etc. to be
proactively disclosed on websites.
.JPG)
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