Telangana was declared as the 'National Lead State' for the second consecutive year by the Central government for being the first State to achieve the target of mandatory 100% audit of 12,769 Gram Panchayats, 540 Mandal Parishads and 32 Zilla Parishads.
The State audit department has made recoveries for an amount of ₹8.78 crore for auditable institutions and enabled remittances of ₹3.96 crore for items such as seigniorage charges, income tax, library cess, GST, etc. to different departments.
Extensive virtual training process and issuance of guidelines for panchayat secretaries, district-level auditors and audit officers during the course of the pandemic ensured quality of audit and timely outcomes, said the recently released Telangana Socio Economic Outlook 2022.
The Centre had introduced the 'Audit Online' in a bid to curb misuse of funds, and ensure transparency and accountability in fund utilisation in the local bodies in 2020. It is an an open-source application developed as part of Panchayat.
Enterprise Suite (PES) under e-panchayat Mission Mode Project (MMP) initiated by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj. Online auditing in at least 20% of Gram Panchayats in each State was made mandatory by the 15th Finance Commission to receive further funds for development activities in rural local bodies.
The TS government’s use of ‘Audit Online’ platform streamlined the audit process due to time-bound schedules being assigned to officials and ease of monitoring progress of work. The audit team has also imparted training on usage of Audit Online to officials from States of Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan and also on the best practices in Telangana.
During 2021-22, under State Finance Commission Grants, the TS government has allocated ₹ 1,365 crore on a par with 15th Finance Commission grant of ₹1,365 crore. Till December 2021, under State and 15th Finance Commission grants, ₹1,820 crore has been released to the Gram Panchayats, Mandal Parishads and Zilla Parishads.
The government had released ₹2.84 crore to 332 Gram Panchayats to ensure that they get a minimum of ₹5 lakh annual income. Another ₹500 crore was allocated to Zilla Praja Parishads and Mandal Praja Parishads under State Finance Commission Grants.
Every month another ₹227.50 crore is being released for the Gram Panchayats, and in addition Ministers are given ₹2 crore each, District Collectors ₹1 crore each and Additional Collectors (Local Bodies) are given ₹25 lakh each, amounting to an overall total of ₹72 crore for meeting incidental expenditures during the implementation of ‘Palle Pragathi’ launched in 2019 to improve governance and quality of life.
So far, ₹8,617.45 crore has been spent with key achievements being construction of 12,714 crematoria, 12,751 dumping yards, and plantation of 9.30 crore seedlings across all GPs, added the report.
