WILL GIVING ‘REVENUE COLLECTION’ POWER TO COLLECTORS HELP FILL STATE’s COFFERS?

Jaipur: The state govt has given a new responsibility to district Collectors. They will now have to monitor and establish coordination within the revenue collection machinery employed under the Finance department. Till now, the Collectors were carrying out the role of administration and enforcement of government schemes, projects, developmental works and campaigns.

Now, under the new responsibility, they will have to hold review and monitoring of revenue earning departments of their districts like Commercial taxes, mining, stamp and registration, excise and transport departments. For this, the Collectors will have to hold daily meetings of officials of the concerned departments. Along with a daily progress report, they will have to send their own reports to the Chief Secretary.

In a meeting of officials of Finance department and Collectors organised past Saturday, Chief Secretary Sudhansh Pant gave directions in this regard. Pant stressed on the aspect that with the end of the current financial year (March 31) the revenue targets of all departments should be completed hundred percent.

Administrative experts stress that it is for the first time that a Chief Secretary has engrossed himself into this task and the Collectors have been made part of that process. According to information received from Finance department, the revenue target of the current financial year ending March 31 is 1,04,571 crore rupees. Against this, till March 18, revenue of 97,867 crore rupees has been collected. According to sources, the department had to face extreme situations while functioning through the year. Due to change of government and model code of conduct, work came to halt for two months.

Due to bar on movement of cash during election time, the work of stamp and registration department was hugely affected. On the other hand, due to two months long ‘Saavan’ season, the liquor sale was also affected and now since VAT has been reduced and the price of petrol and diesel has also been lessened, the revenue will also be less.

Sources also stress that the first six months of the current financial year passed under the previous Congress government and in this six months, the action and work undertaken by Excise and Mines department was rather gloomy and thus, the government would face its brunt now.

This information is also important that Commercial department has the responsibility to fill up more than half of the state coffers whose revenue collection, till today, is sixty thousand crore rupees, but apparently the current government has not paid much notice to the department since two posts of IAS and five posts of RAS in the department are lying vacant and CCT Ravi Kumar Surpur alone is fighting an uphill battle.