Ranchi, March 16 As of March 2022, utilisation certificates worth ₹7,592 crore under various heads remained pending with several Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in Jharkhand, according to a CAG report presented in the assembly on Monday.
The annual technical inspection report on local bodies also showed that detailed contingency bills amounting to ₹39.48 crore remained outstanding until March 2022.
In Jharkhand, there are 50 ULBs, including nine municipal corporations, 21 municipal councils, and 19 nagar panchayats.
The audit scrutiny of records of 20 selected ULBs and the Urban Development and Housing Department was conducted for the period from 2017-18 and 2021-22.
"The significant amount of utilisation certificates (₹7,592.10 crore) remained pending for a long time (since 2006-07), indicating a poor monitoring mechanism for overseeing the use of funds. This posed a risk of misuse or non-utilisation of funds for their intended purposes," it stated.
The ULBs were financially dependent on grants and loans from the government, as their own resources were insufficient to meet expenditure needs, it said.
"There was a short receipt of the fourteenth finance commission grants of ₹243.36 crore for Basic Grants and ₹245.09 crore for Performance Grant against the allocation for the period 2015-16 to 2019-20," the report said.
The CAG report on state public sector enterprises finds that as many as 112 projects worth over ₹194 crore initiated by the Jharkhand State Building Construction Corporation Ltd (JSBCCL) were either dropped or stalled due to lack of land, public obstructions, or contractor delays.
It also observed that the company's inability to foresee the adverse impact of constructing buildings near a high-tension transmission line led to the degree college building remaining unused, rendering the expenditure of ₹12 crore fruitless.
