Polls in mind, Karnataka government overshoots budget for road works

Credit: DH Illustration

In a poll-time stretch, the BJP government has sanctioned over 13,000 rural road works whose cost is nearly three times the money allocated in the budget, according to official data.

These are works under the 5054 head of account where sanctions are largely driven by demands made by lawmakers and signed off by the chief minister.

Chief ministers are known to sanction road works to be in the good books of MLAs, even if that means approving projects for which there is no budgetary allocation.

For the 2021-22 and 2022-23 financial years, the government sanctioned 13,850 road works — mostly asphalting and concreting — costing Rs 4,248.61 crore. This is way more than the Rs 1,520 crore allocated in the budget books.

Kodagu, Dakshina Kannada, Uttara Kannada, Hassan and Tumakuru districts — all of them politically significant for the BJP — account for two-fifths of the rural road works sanctioned.

This financial year, under Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai’s tenure, the districts of Hassan, Tumakuru and Ramanagara, where the BJP is trying to increase its presence, have received the highest number of new road works.

At a review meeting earlier this week, Bommai noted that several of these road works were yet to commence. He pushed officials to get cracking.

Sources in the government said once the works are completed, the bills are sent to the administrative department for clearance. They get marked as pending bills for which funds are made available in supplementary estimates, which deal with additional expenditures incurred over and above the budget provisions.

Works sanctioned under the 5054 head of account have become notorious as non-starters. Since payments are uncertain, contractors are hesitant, sources point out.

Pending bills of works sanctioned under the 5054 head of account have been bulging since 2018-19, when the Congress-JD(S) coalition was in power. Apparently, the then chief minister H D Kumaraswamy had cleared works worth Rs 983 crore. Later, BJP government under B S Yediyurappa sanctioned road works worth at least Rs 2,100 crore, according to sources.

Bommai is also pushing officials to complete road works under phase three of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. Of the 5,373.26 km sanctioned by the Union government, Karnataka has completed 3,700.46 km so far. Bommai wants the balance 1,672.8 km done by December this year, keeping the 2023 Assembly elections in mind.