Delhi govt to convene internal audit meeting to look at Covid expenses, tighten spending

The Delhi government is scheduled to convene a meeting of its internal audit department on Friday, with an aim to tighten the expenditure lists submitted by various departments for the upcoming budget and to scrutinise expenses incurred by departments during the Covid-19 pandemic, said a senior government official in the know of the matter

The Delhi government is scheduled to convene a meeting of its internal audit department on Friday, with an aim to tighten the expenditure lists submitted by various departments for the upcoming budget and to scrutinise expenses incurred by departments during the Covid-19 pandemic, said a senior government official in the know of the matter.

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Earlier this week, the Delhi government had called for the meeting of the internal audit department via a circular that said the agenda of the meeting will be a discussion of problems faced during an internal audit, need for training, periodicity of audit and developing ways to select the expropriate expense heads for audit.

A senior official in the finance department said, on condition of anonymity, “The aim of the meeting is to develop ways to tighten the lists of planned and unplanned budget expenditures submitted by several departments for the fiscal 2020-21 budget. More than 100 departments have so far shared their estimates. This year, in light of loss of revenue caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, departments have been told to prioritise projects and keep budgets tight.”

The official further said, “The other aim is to develop ways to better scrutinise expenses incurred during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially after department heads were allowed to incur certain expenses, without necessarily getting each file cleared by the finance department.”

In September 2020, the government had allowed the heads of departments and secretary ranked officials to authorised departmental expenses of up to ₹1 crore without sending the file through the finance department. For expenses exceeding ₹1 crore, they were authorised to send the files directly to the ministers concerned and forward a cabinet note on the matter.

“In any case, departments were exempted from the ritual of compulsorily getting all expenses cleared through the finance department, which was often time-consuming. The decision was taken in light of the emergency that the Covid-19 management entailed. Those expenses have to be internally audited now,” the official quoted above said.