THE JHARKHAND STORY NETWORK
Ranchi, Dec 2: Chief Minister Hemant Soren today asked the top brass in the state bureaucracy to pull up socks to speed up revenue collection and explore possibilities for new sources of additional revenue collection.
In a meeting with the Principal Secretary / Secretary of various departments in the Jharkhand Ministry regarding the fulfilment of additional responsibilities of new schemes started beyond the budget of the financial year 2024-25 and preparations for the supplementary budget of the financial year 2024-25, Soren said development work has to be accelerated and revenue collection also has to be increased.
Notably, the state government needs a huge amount of additional funds during the current fiscal to fulfil its promises of Rs 2500 honorarium to every woman in the 18-50 age group, subsidised LPG cylinders and free power up to 200 MW among others.
Strengthen revenue management
The chief minister said that revenue management should be strengthened. “Along with this, steps should be taken to control the wastage of revenue and establishment expenditure,” he added.
The chief minister also asked the officials to remove the flaws of the revenue generation system by doing micro-level observation. He said that all the departments should prepare an action plan for revenue collection.
Coordination among departments is necessary
The chief minister said that many times due to lack of coordination between the departments, the pace of revenue collection slows down and revenue collection is not done according to the target. “In such a situation, to solve this problem, all the departments should coordinate among themselves and do the work of revenue collection. For this, the responsibility of the officers of various departments in the districts should be fixed,” Soren added.
Make revenue-giving agencies a business model
The chief minister said that there are many such agencies, boards and corporations in many departments which can prove to be a better means of revenue. “Establish such agencies as a business model, so that they can expand their operations. This will give additional revenue to the state,” he told the officers.
System to check expenses incurred under CSR
The chief minister said that many industries and companies are working in the state. “Many public welfare schemes are implemented by them from the CSR fund. But, the information about the CSR amount spent by them does not reach the state government. In such a situation, create a mechanism through which the expenditure made by the companies under the CSR fund can be checked,” he said.
He also told the officials to talk to various companies and industrial groups and explore the possibilities of increasing revenue.
Senior officers, who attended the meeting included Chief Secretary Alka Tiwari, Additional Chief Secretary to Chief Minister Avinash Kumar, Ajay Kumar Singh, Vandana Dadel, MS Meena, Sunil Kumar, Prashant Kumar, Secretary Praveen Toppo, Secretary Amitabh Kaushal, Secretary Abu Bakar Siddique, Kripananda Jha, K Srinivasan, Manoj Kumar, Umashankar Singh, Chandrashekhar, Arwa Rajkamal, Vipra Bhal, Jitendra Singh, Manoj, besides Sanjeev Besra, Amit Kumar, Nisha Oraon and Rajiv Lochan Bakshi.