E-Paper
Now, UP gearing up to make budgetary sanctions paperless
The Uttar Pradesh government is gearing up to make all budgetary allocations/sanctions for 2021-2022 paperless
The Uttar Pradesh government is gearing up to make all budgetary allocations/sanctions for 2021-2022 paperless. With this, it aims to bring about more efficiency and transparency in its functioning from the new financial year -- April 1, 2021.
“All the budgetary sanctions will be paperless. We will ensure that financial sanctions at every level are paperless,” said S Radha Chauhan, additional chief secretary, finance, who issued two government orders this month to streamline the process of financial sanctions to different departments.
The current financial year (2020-2021) comes to close on March 31, 2021 and any government expenditure on or after April 1, 2021 will be made as per allocations in the ‘paperless’ state budget that the state assembly passed on March 4, 2021.
“As per the provisions of Article 204 of the Constitution of India, the state assembly, through the Uttar Pradesh Appropriation Act, 2021, has authorised the budgetary grants and necessary expenditure (for 2021-2022) from the consolidated fund. So, the approved grants and charged expenditure should be taken as the final budget for 2021-2022,” said Chauhan in a government order on March 22, 2021.
“All the financial sanctions for new items of expenditure (as provided in the state budget), disbursement of loans etc will be issued only with approval of state finance department,” she said in the GO.
The state government, along with the GO, has circulated a format on which departments are expected to provide necessary information. Besides providing details about how the financial sanctions will be issued by departments in 2021-2022, the GO asks the departments to make allotment of old age, widow and farmers’ pension etc directly to the accounts of beneficiaries.
On March 10, 2021, the state government had issued another order giving details about the use of Budget Allotment System to make paperless budgetary allocations.
“The state government has presented its budget for 2021-2022 as e-budget. The state finance department will perform all its functions on e-office system……Under the present system, financial sanctions are issued manually and the financial controller or respective officer makes the entry about this on the online budget allotment system. The implementation of the budget for 2021-2022 w e f April 1, 2021 will be done digitally,” the GO said.
The state government also pointed out towards the problems being faced in issuing sanctions up to now and says under the present system it can’t be ensured that sanctions are being issued in accordance with budgetary provisions. It further pointed out that sanctions thus issued by administrative departments are not available to heads of department (HoDs) in real time or respective HoDs do not feed the details on the system well in time.
Yashvir Tyagi, former professor department of economics, Lucknow University, said: “The UP government’s decision is a welcome step. All departments will have to be up to date in maintaining accounts now. Under the new system the state government will have greater control over monitoring of expenditure. It will enable the government to immediately know how the departments are spending budgetary allocations. This will ensure efficiency and transparency in government’s functioning and help in boosting UP’s economy.”
