Why Are Departments Ignoring Assembly Panels?

GUWAHATI: Do the government departments at all care for the notices served by the Assembly Committees? The poser assumes significance as even after the lapse of a year, a number of departments have chosen to pay no heed to the Action Taken Reports (ATR) sought from them by the Estimates Committee of Assam Assembly.

The Estimates Committee sought the ATRs from the departments after it tabled reports on a number of developmental schemes on the floors of the Assembly on April 4, 2018. The ATRs were to be submitted within 90 days. A team of the Estimates Committee came across discrepancies in the implementation of several developments works in Darrang and Sonitpur districts during its field visits from January 9 to 11, 2017. The committee had categorically asked the Irrigation, Urban Development, Public Health Engineering, PWD, and Water Resources departments to submit ATRs.

With respect to the Irrigation Department, the Estimate Committee members during their field visit observed that the farmers were not getting adequate water for their paddy fields as some irrigation projects were unsuccessful to serve farmers’ need while execution of some other projects remained incomplete. The members further detected that while construction of many canals were also left half done, many machines were not functioning properly.

The Estimates Committee members found discrepancy in the PHE department as well. They discovered that the respective zila parishads had deducted Rs 1,000 as Value Added Tax (VAT) from beneficiaries as against the earmarked Rs 12,000 meant for the construction of individual household latrines (IHHL). Under the circumstance, each beneficiary got only Rs 11,000.

There were anomalies in the implementation of several projects by the Sewerage Board and Urban Development Departments as well.

Meanwhile, the Estimates Committee expressed serious concern over non-submission of ATRs by the departments concerned and decided in a recent meeting to issue fresh reminders to the erring departments to submit the same.

The Estimates Committee headed by senior legislator Brindaban Goswami has members from all political parties. These Assembly committees serve a significant purpose of not only monitoring execution of various schemes undertaken by government departments, but also forwarding their recommendations to the State government with respect to timely implementation of such developmental projects across the State.

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