Patna, July 31: The state has fared poorly in the first quarter (April-June) of the current financial year in the utilisation of plan fund, spending only 8.026 per cent of the annual allocation.

Merely Rs 2,729 crore of the Rs 34,000-crore plan fund has been utilised between April and June this financial year. In the corresponding period of the previous fiscal (2012-13), Bihar had spent Rs 2,121 crore (8.27 per cent) of its actual plan size of Rs 25,628 crore.

The utilisation of plan fund assumes significance because it is used for undertaking development work, whereas the non-plan fund is used for routine expenses.

The growing size of Bihar’s annual plan over successive years has been one of the points which the Nitish Kumar government has never failed to highlight while boasting of its performance on the development front. The plan size of the current fiscal is 34.4 per cent more than the previous one.

Terming the low funds utilisation in the initial months of a fiscal year a “chronic problem”, N.K. Choudhary, a professor of economics at Patna University, said: “It is a bad reflection on the governance. Bihar has been spending more than 40 per cent of its plan fund in the last quarter, as against the Centre’s directive of using just 15 per cent of the plan fund in the last quarter and the remaining in the first three.”

Explaining its repercussions, Choudhary said: “When a fund is used just for the sake of achieving utilisation percentage, one cannot rule out the possibility of improper utilisation and thus denying the people their due.”

Undeterred by the first quarter statistics, the state government appeared confident of utilising the sanctioned plan fund in the current fiscal.

Rural works minister Bhim Singh said: “People criticising us now would have nothing to say once the funds utilisation picks up pace in the subsequent quarters. We have achieved high utilisation percentage of plan fund in the past and there is no reason why we won’t be able to repeat our feat in the current fiscal.”

Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, who held the finance portfolio in the Nitish government till June 16, said: “The leadership has taken the backseat in the government. Everything has been left in the hands of bureaucracy.”

SLOW START

Focus

• Utilisation of plan fund Status
• Only Rs 2729 crore of Rs 34000-crore fund utilised in first quarter

Expert opinion

• Low utilisation of funds in first quarter would lead to rush in meeting target later. As a result, funds would be misused