AUGUST 30, 2018

By TIOL Edit Team

IT is indeed shocking to learn about revenue defalcation amidst Aadhaar, biometric attendance and digital payments dazzle. And shock transforms into a jolt when no person less than a Cabinet Minister musters courage to speak on it. And speaks diametrically opposite of what Prime Minister thinks.

On 23rd August, 2018, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi disclosed that about 14 lakh kids were fake/ghost in Assam's anganwadi centres (AWCs). She attributed this finding to a recent survey in the State.

The very same day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a totally different take on embezzlement. He claimed that the Government has eliminated corruption in the welfare schemes for the poor. He said that the 'cut company' business has been shut.

At a function to mark handing over of houses to beneficiaries under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G) in Gujarat, Mr. Modi said if the Government releases one rupee from Delhi, it reaches as paisa 100 in the house of the poor. He implied 100% delivery of benefits.

We appreciate PM's resolve and efforts to weed out corruption. Simultaneously, we urge him to exercise restraint in making sweeping claims as India has a very long way to go in eliminating corruption at various levels including in the private sector. In fact, no country is free of corruption. It is dynamic. Corruption keeps changing its form in different situations.

In fact, Google search for word 'corruption' under PMAY yields shocking stories from across the country including Gujarat. Each such negative report should be transformed into a new initiative to take on bribery and revenue leakages.

Coming back to issue of fake beneficiaries, Mrs. Gandhi urged the District Magistrates across the country to identify fake beneficiaries under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme as soon as possible. She was addressing a workshop on upcoming National Nutrition Month in New Delhi.

ICDS is designed to benefit children up to the age of six and pregnant women & lactating mothers. ICDS has six components including supplementary nutrition.

A news report quoted an official as stating that revenue leakage amounted to over Rs 1 crore per day at the rate of expenditure of a minimum Rs 8/kid per day. This means Rs 365 crore revenue leakage alone in one State under a single component of a scheme.

This is not an isolated case of ghost beneficiaries that are spread across public sector enterprises, educational institutions, municipal corporations, pensioners, farmers and many others under different welfare schemes.

Earlier this month, the Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Dr. Satya Pal Singh informed Parliament that a survey of 12.68 lakh teachers in higher education has detected 85,708 instances of either duplicate or invalid Aadhaar numbers. The Ministry has asked two entities to identify the reasons for incorrect entries. It should, however, be noted that the Ministry has not used the description 'ghost teachers' which figured in Parliament question.

In April this year, the Government had to field a question seeking information on steps taken to deal with problem of ghost farmers benefiting from crop insurance. It is available under two schemes - Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) and Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS).

In its reply, the Government stated that data is captured in online/offline mode on individual insured farmers along with their Aadhaar number, mobile number, agricultural loans, land records etc. This enables de-duplication and countering the issue of ghost farmers.

The Government added: "As regards penal action against ghost farmers, Operational Guidelines of PMFBY provide that double insurance is not allowed and farmer must ensure insurance coverage for notified crops cultivated from a single source. The insurance companies have the right to repudiate all such claims and to not refund the premium as well. Company can also take legal action against such farmers".

More than the ghost farmers, it is the issue of duplicate/multiple payment of insurance claim by different banks for insured farmers. This issue figured in Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on Performance Audit of Agriculture Crop Insurance Schemes released during July 2017.

Last year, a national daily reported the CBI registering a case of siphoning off of Government money by a private service provider through under-provisioning of manpower for operation of a 11.2-km rail tunnel in Jammu & Kashmir.

The story of ghost workers in coal mining and municipal corporations is well known.

A national daily last year reported an audit finding, detecting payment of Rs 1942.82 crore as pension by erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and one of its spin-offs to their employees without finding out if they were still alive over 18 years.

In 2011, Delhi High Court described payment of wages to thousands of non-existing MCD employees as a "fiscal disaster" caused by "catastrophic maladministration".

The Government appears to have not fully measured the depth and vastness of problems of revenue leakages through fake beneficiaries. The fraudsters have found loopholes in digitalized operations of the Government to generate payments for ghost employees/beneficiaries.

Railways encountered a few instances of its employees misusing computerized payroll accounting software to create fake employee accounts to siphon off funds during the current and previous years.

It must be said to the credit of Railways Ministry that it not only issued alert to all zonal railways but also constituted a committee to plug digital loopholes.

A committee of top rail financial officials has now come out with a slew of recommendations after undertaking a functional audit of its Integrated Payroll and Accounting System (IPAS).

The Committee has identified potential risks that can lead to revenue leakges in future, if they are left unattended. An interesting risk is entry of October 2nd and January 26th as appointment date for its staff in certain zonal railways. The committee has recommended that the actual date of appointment should he identified from service records of such employees as one-time drive.

The Committee has recommended complete validation of auto-populated master tables for pay roll, provident fund etc. through PAN and Aadhaar to rule out possibilities of duplicate entries.

As put by the Committee, "double data should be carefully examined to see if excess payment have been made or not."

Such scrutiny and validation of records should be done by all Government entities, government contracts and welfare schemes.

The Government must strengthen internal audit, information technology audit and external audit for entities. It must allow CAG to hire more manpower. The Government should also empower it adequately to prevent corruption and revenue leakages.

Put simply, the war against revenue leakages & corruption is an eternal challenge. It requires eternal vigilance.