CHB fails to recover Rs 44 crore in rent from 13.4K small flat allottees: Audit
The Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) has failed to recover licence fees/rent worth more than Rs 44 crore from allottees of the small flats, points out the Director General of Audit (Central) in its report.
According to the report obtained by activist RK Garg under the RTI Act, the audit of the CHB was conducted for the period of 2017 to 2023.
The CHB, an undertaking of the UT Administration, was established in 1976 with the primary objective of providing affordable and quality housing to individuals lacking shelter within the Union Territory of Chandigarh. As of March 2019, the board had completed the construction of a total of 67,565 houses of various categories, including rehabilitation schemes.
The audit report highlighted that during checking of records related to the recovery of licence fees/rent from small flat allottees, it was noted that Rs 44.26 crore was to be recovered from 13,464 defaulters across different sectors as of March 31, 2023. The Board neither made any concrete efforts to recover these dues nor formulated any penalty clause for defaulters.
In August 2013, the UT Administration decided that beneficiaries would be allotted small flats for a period of 20 years with a licence fee of ?800 per month for the first five years. There will be a 20% increase for the subsequent five-year periods, bringing the fee to ?960, ?1,152 and ?1,382 for each successive term.
The report further pointed out that the licence fees/rent were being deposited by allottees into the respective bank, but the Board was depositing these funds into the Consolidated Fund of India on a quarterly basis, instead of promptly after the realisation of dues. The receipts deposited in the treasury through challans were not reconciled or verified by the Board, resulting in a delayed deposit of ?53 crore.
According to Rule 6 of the Central Government (Receipts and Payments) Rules, 1983, and Rule 7 of the General Financial Rules, all money received as revenue or receipts must be promptly included in the government account. However, during checking of records related to the deposit of licence fees/rent in the government account for the period 2017-2023, it was found that ?1.59 crore received for March 2023 had not been deposited as of May 24, 2023.
The audit further pointed out that, as per Central Public Works Department (CPWD) guidelines (2019), the Engineer-in-Charge should ensure that at any point during the progress of the work, the expenditure does not exceed the deposits received for the work. If timely deposits are doubtful, the officer is required to notify the client that work will stop unless further deposits are received, and any contractual liabilities resulting from such stoppage must be borne by the client. However, the audit found that the provisional balance sheet for 2021-22 showed an expenditure of Rs 118,53,23,468 as of March 31, 2023, and Rs 118,39,72,493 as of March 31, 2021, with only a minor difference of Rs 13,50,975 in the balances between the two years. This indicated that no significant progress was made during the year, and all works remained pending since the previous year.
