Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Public Accountability

Yesterday we had a meeting of all nine Development Authorities including KMDA, ADDA, HDA, SJDA etc. We decided that all of them should bring out Annual Reports for 2009-2010 soon. The Annual Reports should contain a statement of accounts and application of funds for projects executed by them. Thereafter, the Reports would be presented to the public at large by organising a workshop at each Authority HQ and also giving copies to people's representatives.
It was learnt that SJDA (Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority) had already done so in a public ceremony earlier this month and it drew very positive response.
We set ourselves a target of October 2010 for this.

2 comments:

  1. So, does that mean that all these development authorities, with the exception of SJDA, never published annual reports till the last financial year?

    Anjan Chakraborty

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  2. @ Anjan Chakraborty:

    It's not like that.
    Accounts are regularly drawn up every year and audited by competent authorities. These are scrutinised by CAG and finally reviewed by the Assembly.
    But there is no mandate for placing it to the public forum.
    Annual Reports, on the other hand, are not compulsory and different Dev Authorities have been quite irregular about it. I'd now wish (a) to combine Accounts and Annual Report and (b) release it in the public domain.
    -DS

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