CAG comes down heavily on Haryana Housing Board

Bhartesh Singh Thakur
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, November 5

All the debtors of Haryana Housing Board are unreconciled and unconfirmed. Allottees wise ledgers maintained by the Board are incomplete. In the absence of confirmation and reconciliation of balances, correctness of the figures appearing under the head in the accounts could not be ascertained in the Audit.

These are the findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General regarding Haryana Housing Board which carried out its audit for the year ending 2018.  The annual statement of accounts of the Board was presented before the Assembly today.

The arbitration awards against the Housing Board amounting to Rs 5.20 crore have been unsettled. Similarly, the arbitration awards in favour of the Board amounting to Rs 1.21 crore are also unsettled.

The sundry debtors include Rs 2.90 crore due from parties for period in excess of five years.

The CAG says that the “financial figures for loan and advances, sundry debtors, sundry creditors, security deposits, amount payable to staff, registration, deposits, other deposits of allotees, earnest money and security deduction of contractors and other debits and credits appearing in the financial statements were unconfirmed”.

No internal audit was conducted in 2017-18.

The board has not prepared any accounting manual. There is no system of rotation of duties of employees dealing with cash, stocks and other valuables.

It has also come out that the Board has not obtained any security deposits from the employees handling valuables such as cash and stocks.

The list of title deeds for the landed properties and buildings was not prepared by the Board.

The CAG says that cost of land to be paid pending bifurcation of schemes is shown as Rs 163.45 crore. However, it doesn’t include the interest payable on the amount since the last date of payment of instalment towards land cost.

“The non-provisioning of interest had resulted in understatement of cost of land pending bifurcation as well as sundry creditors by Rs 53.06 crore,” says the Audit. Further the Board has not maintained property register and the land remained unutilised.

The term loan from HUDCO and NHB is against the guarantee of Haryana government without mortgage of any property of the Board.