The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has slammed Railways for violating its own procedures in executing projects.
The CAG has found that Railways had been adding unrelated projects and works to original projects, causing heavy burden to its finances.
The costs of the added projects generally exceed those of the original projects.The CAG report, tabled in Parliament this week, also points out that the additions at times also caused safety risks as they were not properly investigated.
Independent works, schemes or projects do not fall in the category of Material Modification as these would require separate sanction of the competent authority.Material Modifications is a term used for the modifications necessary to implement a project of new lines, broad-gauge conversions or any other project.
Audit analysis revealed that while 38 original projects were sanctioned at a cost of Rs. 9,212.92 crore, as many as 91 projects costing Rs 13,383.86 crore were sanctioned as modifications: the additionals required to be added to the original projects.
Thus, the cost of the modification works was even more than the cost of the original projects. The audit was undertaken for projects sanctioned and implemented from 2008-09 to 2012-13.
Audit scrutiny revealed that the Ministry of Railways had, in a number of cases, flouted the procedure laid down for both formulation and approval of projects. Even preliminary procedures like conducting a Techno-Economic Survey have not been followed.
In fact the standard procedure of taking approval of the Planning Commission before inclusion of a work in the Annual Works Programme was also not followed.
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