Rs. 890 crore CSS funds lying unutilised in Manipur

Guwahati: As of December 1, according to sources, the Single Nodal Agency (SNA) account had about Rs 890 crore unutilized money intended for Manipur's Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS).

Health, Rural Development & Panchayati Raj (RDPR), Minority Affairs, Public Health Engineering Department (PHED), and Municipal Administration, Housing & Urban Development  (MAHUD) are some of the departments with large amounts of unutilized bank money in the SNA account.

There were still Rs 177 crore in the health sector that had not been put to use for health and medical education. Besides this, Rs 13.23 crore and Rs 15.83 crore for the National Ayush Mission as well as the National Health Programme and Reproductive Child Health & Health System Strengthening went unused.

For several rural development programmes, including MGNREGA (Rs 67.30 crore), National Rural Livelihood Mission (Rs 47.12 crore), Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (Rs 50 lakh), Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission (Rs 9.39 crore), Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana - Rural (Rs 26.40 crore), and Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, a total of Rs (Rs 2.94 crore).

Under Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karyakaram (PMJVK), the Minority Affairs department has unutilized funds of Rs. 147.77 crore.

Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) and the National Rural Drinking Water Mission in PHED each had a total budget of Rs 98.44 crore that had not yet been expended. 18.45 crore rupees in the social welfare department were underused for a number of programmes.

The recent modification in the CSS operating method is the primary cause of the delay in cash being used, claims a source in the state finance department. It should be noted that, in accordance with the new regulations, the Union government has tightened the grant allocation process and increased inspection of money granted.

However, the source said that the state finance department has written to the heads of various administrative departments urging them to use the money transferred to the SNA account as soon as possible in order to avoid impeding state development and preventing the state from receiving additional instalments from the Center.

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