While the Uttarakhand government and its previous and present chief Ministers are busy making announcements of various populist schemes to entice the electorates worth rupees hundreds of crores, especially during the last few months with inaugurations and foundation stones laying ceremony going unabated, the Comptroller Auditor General report has made a startling disclosure about the state under immense debt/ fiscal deficit of Rs 65, 982 crores.
This massive fiscal deficit that is mounting up constantly year after year starting from the fiscal deficit of merely 4 thousand crores in 2004 has made implementation of various schemes n projects of Uttarakhand in jeopardy. According to the CAG report presented in the state assembly which is currently in session, the gross domestic product ( GDP) growth has constantly come down. What is surprising and shocking is the fact that while the fiscal deficit is on the constant increase since the first government came into existence after Uttarakhand attaining the separate entity, during the current five year tenure of the present government the fiscal deficit has been the maximum.
If one goes through the CAG report’s findings in the year 2019-20, there had been the state GDP drastically came down to 3.19 percent which in the year 2017- 18 had been the maximum i.e. 14.20%. But after this it drastically came down to 3.16 clearly indicating the negative impact of Covid 19 pandemic as well apart from other discrepancies in governance under the prevailing Bhartiya Janata Party rule. etc. During the rule of Congress when Vijay Bahuguna was the chief minister and Harish Rawat replacing him afterwards i. e. in 2015-16, the GDP was at 9.74 percent. While holding several departments especially the PWD ( Public Works Department) responsible for delaying several projects in Uttarakhand, the Comptroller and Auditor General highlighted that in all the jobs of roads and bridges under various divisions are incomplete n inordinately delayed resulting in escalation in costs, enhancing the fiscal deficit further.
In order to cover the massive fiscal deficit of the state adequately the CAV gave certain suggestions viz. Dealing with the long term delayed claims with regard to extracting taxes, collection of state revenue on big scale including enhancement in taxes, in order to enhance the Gross Domestic Product, the government should increase the economy based expenditures in the social and economic sectors, CAG is not satisfied with the govt for not realising/ recovering the heavy disbursed loans under various scheme, which needs to be collected urgently n on mass scale. CAG has also suggested to enhance the resourse mobilisation in the health including time bound completion of various government projects and scheme to safeguard from the escalation costs which is always massive.
It recommended immediate collection of guaranteed commission etc. It may be recalled that the fiscal deficit is enhancing every year even crossing the limit of the state’s annual budget with Uttarakhand compelled to pay several thousand crores as interests to various national n international banks/ agencies against the massive loan sought by successive govts of the state. The state needs to generate the income for various Indigenous sources to lessen the increasing fiscal deficit year after year, currently reaching to Rs 66 thousand crores.
