Centre spent just 27% of budget for minorities by Oct 31: Report

NEW DELHI: The Central Government had spent just about a quarter of its 2019-20 budget for schemes for the education and skills training of minority communities by the end of October, 2019.

For three categories of scholarships given to students, the Ministry of Minority Affairs had released just fractions of the budgeted amounts – from 8.36 percent to 17.63 percent – till October 31, 2019.

Data shared by the Ministry of Minority Affairs with the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment shows that out of Rs 4,700 crores allocated to schemes of the ministry, just Rs 1,291 crores had been spent till the beginning of November, leaving just four months to spend the remaining 73 percent.

While the ministry roughly kept to its expenditure plan for the first two quarters, ending on September 30, 2019, the plan veered off-course in the third quarter. "Out of the Rs 1,880 crore proposed, only Rs 454 crore was spent till 31.10.2019 (or, October 31, 2019) which meant that Rs 1,436 crore were left for utilisation in two months upto 31.12.2019,” says the standing committee report which was tabled in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on December 12. It added: “It is not difficult to predict the trend in the fourth quarter from this pace.”

Low spending on scholarships

The delayed release of scholarship funds will affect students most. These are awarded to students from minority communities based on their family income.

Out of Rs 1,220.3 crore allocated to pre-matric scholarships for school students in Classes 1 to 10, just Rs 101.02 crore had been released by October 31– an appalling 8.36 percent. The ministry’s record is only slightly better with post-matric scholarships for Classes 11 and 12 – Rs 49.3 crore has been released out of Rs 496.01 crore, or 9.94 percent. For the merit-cum-means scholarships for older students pursuing technical or professional courses, it has released 17.63 percent of its budget.

The committee, headed by BJP’s Rama Devi, member of Parliament from Bihar, has said that the amounts offered to minority community students as pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means scholarships “are very low” and recommended that they be “made reasonable to meet their educational expenses”. For post-matric scholarship, students can get a maximum of Rs 10,000 per year (if they study technical courses) and under Rs 500 per month as maintenance costs. The Pre-matric scholarship is less than Rs 1,000 per year. The committee “strongly recommend[s] that the amount to be given as scholarships…must be commensurate to the cost of living and revised time to time to offset the pressure of inflation”.

Poor utilization, unapproved projects

The delayed release of funds is “bound of impact the efficient and qualitative utilization of funds for different schemes”, says the report. The committee has recommended that the Ministry of Minority Affairs itself takes steps to streamline the “procedural matters” it blames for the delay.

Further, the committee found that in eight states, not a single project has been approved under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karyakram “since inception”. The PMJVK is the restructured version of the “area development programme” aimed at developing backward areas with substantial minority populations through interventions in education, healthcare and skill-development. No projects were approved under this programme in 2018-19 in Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Puducherry Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. Further, the committee found that “even after sanctioning of sufficient funds”, none of the projects proposed by Haryana, Jharkhand and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were sanctioned.

In 2019-20, of the Rs. 1,470 crore budgeted for the PMJVK, just Rs 460.22 crore has been spent, or just over 31 percent. The Ministry of Minority Affairs reported an unspent balance of Rs. 4,858.1 crore till the end of October, which the committee describes as “disquieting”.

The committee empowered to have toilets built under India’s cleanliness mission, or Swacch Bharat Abhiyan, launched by the BJP government in October 2014, has sanctioned just 2,990 toilets in identified minority concentration areas in the past five years. This figure includes the 1,870 toilets built in schools.

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