The State government’s ambitious Swachcha Grama Yojana to bring in total change in the physical environment of villages has come under the scanner of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) which has pointed out that the scheme was launched without proper data.

In its report on panchayat raj institutions for the year 2006, which was tabled in the Legislative Assembly, the CAG has stated that the scheme was launched without relevant data regarding the number of households and the selection of villages was improper, which in turn adversely affected implementation of the scheme.
The government had launched the scheme in 2000 to provide a clean and healthy environment in villages by improving roads, sanitation and drainages in villages. The scheme proposed to cover 1,300 villages with a total outlay of Rs 260 crore.

Defeating the purpose
The CAG has found that the government had no proper data of households in villages. Besides, guidelines were not followed in implementing the scheme. Financial management was poor and all components of the scheme were not implemented, defeating the very purpose of the programme. Moreover, lack of an action plan had resulted in poor results even after three years of scheduled completion of the project.

 The State Government would have received additional funds from the Centre under the Swajaldhara programme (rural drinking water supply) had it entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Union ministry of Rural Development or prepared a vision statement.

It has also observed that gross subversion of prescribed internal controls, involving officials at various levels of panchayat raj engineering division, zilla panchayats and district treasury, Haveri facilitated fraudulent withdrawal of funds aggregating Rs 96.41 lakh by preparing fictitious travelling allowance bills.

Besides, delay in entrustment of work and lack of efforts to complete the project for supply of work to Bannikoppa and other villages rendered an expenditure of Rs 11.48 crore unfruitful.

As of March 2006, at least 335 cases of misappropriations of Rs 24.17 crore were pending at various stages of settlement in 23 ZPs.  The delays in settlement of these cases resulted in postponement of recovery and non-recovery and officials responsible for irregularities going unpunished.