Ask Ministry of Textiles how to spend Rs 1000 cr an hour

What’s the most you’ve ever spent in an hour? A few thousands or maybe even a few lakh? Even then you’re not even close to the ministry of textiles which reportedly spent about Rs 1,000 crore per hour on projects as they tried to meet a 31 March deadline to spend a budgetary allocation of Rs 8,200 crore. A Comptroller and Auditor General report tabled in Parliament has noted that the Ministry of textiles sanctioned the amount, which amounts to 63 percent of its total budgetary allocation for various projects on the last day of the fiscal year of 2010 -11, the Indian Express reported. [caption id=“attachment_289420” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The ministry waited till the last day of the fiscal year. Reuters”]  [/caption] The newspaper used a rule of thumb that the average Union ministry works around eight hours a day which meant that the ministry ran through the remaining funds at an astonishing rate of a little more than Rs 1,000 crore an hour. The ministry was at the time being headed by Dayanidhi Maran, who was subsequently forced to resign after allegations of involvement in the 2G spectrum case. The Ministry for Heavy Industries, headed by Congress veteran Vilasrao Deshmukh, was also a contender and spent close to 63 percent of its total budgetary allocation on the last day of the fiscal year in order to prevent having to return the funds to the treasury. The Ministry of Finance headed by Pranab Mukherjee, and which had earlier censured ministries for their last minute spending, also ran through Rs 8,039 crore in the space of a day, the report stated. A Hindustan Times report stated that the CAG had sought an explanation for the lumping of expenditure. “The government should examine the reasons of lumping of expenditure, particularly in the case of investments, other charges, advertising and publicity, minor works, major works and machinery and equipment, at the fag end of the financial year,” the CAG report said.