Assam: CAG report reveals bungling of Project Tiger funds

The authorities bungled initially by allocating a very small part of the originally proposed sum. They then used the fund in an ad-hoc manner, did not carry out the tiger census properly, diverted huge sums, did not create a special strike force and did little to remove encroachers. Worse, the authorities failed to keep count of the arms and ammunition and wireless sets provided to them to tackle the poaching problem.

These irregularities have come to light in the latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), submitted to the Assam Legislative Assembly earlier this week. The report says that even the State Board for Wildlife headed by chief minister himself, did not meet to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the Project TIger scheme.

Two national parks in the state – Manas and Nameri – had a proposed outlay of Rs 20.97 crore for the years 2001-2006. The Centre approved only Rs 10.59 crore, which was only 50 per cent of the sum. And the final sum released was just Rs 3.30 crore —only 16 per cent of the original sum.

“Both the Centre and the state government did not ensure adequate funding for effective implementation of the scheme,” the CAG report says. It points out that this is in total contravention of a Supreme Court direction, apart from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) rules regarding prompt release of funds.

“According to directions issued by MOEF in July 2000, funds released by the Centre for wildlife should reach the field level within six weeks of release. A Supreme Court direction in February 2005 had asked both the Centre and state governments to release Central assistance to the field level within 15 days,” the CAG report said.

But, as the CAG audit revealed, even the little assistance released took 76-253 days to reach the field-level.

Whatever sums the state government released, was invariably towards the end of the financial year, leading to accumulation of large unspent balances.

The Centre considered the unspent money to be savings at the end of 2003-04, and thus released no funds during 2004-05 for Manas and Nameri parks.

Though a tiger census was conducted, it was not thorough. The census shows a decrease in the number of tigers in both Manas and Nameri, and the CAG report notes that the reasons for the “sudden decrease” are not investigated or analysed. The number of tigers in Manas fell from 89 in 1997 to 65 in 2000, while in Nameri it has come down to 37 in 2005 from 50 in 1997.

The CAG report cites records revealing that no census was carried out in Manas in 1998-1999 and from 2001 to 2005.

The report also notes that 37 firearms out of a total of 116 in the two parks, are missing. And as many as 48 arms used by the authorities had become “illegal” because they had failed to renew their licences.

The reason cited for the missing firearms was that they were snatched by miscreants, but the report says there are no details such as date and place of snatching, FIR numbers, police investigation reports etc to prove the claim.

“This indicates that no inventory of firearms is maintained, their licences are not renewed and they are not maintained properly and securely. The accounts of arms and ammunition maintained by the Field Director of Manas were improper and require thorough investigation,” the report said.