Par panel flays lower allocation for flagship schemes

A Parliamentary panel today criticised the government for "gross downsizing" of the gross budgetary support to flagship schemes such as Aadhaar and Digital India programme.
"A scrutiny of allocation made under Plan schemes shows that the approved Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) has been grossly downsized, leaving a yawning gap between the proposed and the approved GBS," Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT said in a report tabled in the Lok Sabha today.
This, indeed, is a matter of grave concern to the Committee, it added.
The Committee, chaired by Anurag Singh Thakur, also endorsed the demand of Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY) for allocation of additional funds for the current fiscal.

"The Committee also desire that DeitY need to have adequate budget in the coming Plan years because this Department are implementing some of the schemes/programmes which are central to the building of a technologically empowered society to take a lead in the global digital economy," it said.
For 2016-17, Rs 9,530.90 crore was proposed as GBS, while only Rs 3,200 crore was approved.

On Aadhaar, the Panel said the current budgetary allocation of Rs 800 crore (against a proposed amount of Rs 1,468.23 crore) will not be sufficient to meet the requirement.
"The Committee desire that allocations to UIDAI may suitably be enhanced to meet the requirement so that the projected targets as per BE (Busget Estimates) proposal 2016-17 are not affected," it added.

UIDAI was earlier with NITI Aayog but from September 2015 onwards, it has been shifted under DeitY as an Attached Office.
Also, DeitY had proposed an estimate of Rs 5,778.07 crore for the Digital India Programme. However, a sum of only Rs 1,282 crore has been provided under this programme.
On expenditure for promotion of electronics and IT hardware manufacturing in India, an allocation of Rs 70 crore has been made against the proposed estimate of Rs 854.64 crore.
"The Committee, therefore, recommend that adequate allocation of funds is needed under different schemes of this project and it should be the constant endeavour of the Department to engage with the Ministry of Finance for requisite allocation," it said.

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The panel said that the Department of Telecom should pursue with the Finance Ministry the reduction in allocation for USOF as it is likely to affect implementation of NOFN and LWE scheme.
For the year 2016-17, against the proposed amount of Rs 7350 crore, a sum of only Rs 2755 crore has been allocated for Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).
The Committee said that reduced allocation is likely to affect implementation of National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) and Left Wing Extremism (LWE) scheme.
The committee said it can hardly overemphasise the importance of the NOFN project in the context of the Digital India mission.

"Hence, the Department can ill afford any delay in implementation of the NOFN project on account of lack of adequate funds. The Department need to pursue the matter at the highest level with the Ministry of Finance," the report said.
The panel further said for the year 2015-16, an amount of Rs 848.43 crore was allocated at budget estimate (BE) under NOFN which was increased to Rs 2,520.75 crore at revised estimate (RE) and the actual utilisation upto December 2015 was only Rs 1,254.97 crore.
"Although some progress has been made in laying of pipe and OFC (optic fibre), only 5,655 gram panchayats have been provided with connectivity," the report said.

The Department have stated that phase-1 covering 1,00,000 gram panchayats is planned to be completed by March 2017.
The committee also said significant progress has been made during 2015-16 in setting up towers in LWE affected areas.
An amount of Rs 100 crore was allocated at BE which was increased to Rs 419 crore at RE and the actual utilisation as on February 2016 was Rs 308.53 crore.
"Out of 2199 towers, 1557 towers have started radiation till march 2016. It is now expected that most of the sites would be functional by June 2016 while a few sites may take a longer time, till September 2016 to comply with procedural formalities," the report added.