The erstwhile TMC government had not tabled Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reports for four fiscals up to 2024-25.
The reports tabled in the House include the state's finance accounts, appropriation accounts and compliance audit reports for various departments, besides performance audits of public health infrastructure and healthcare services, panchayati raj institutions, Integrated Child Development Services, Samagra Shiksha programme's implementation and other sectors.
Accusing the TMC government for not tabling the CAG reports as a "constitutional lapse", the state finance minister Swapan Dasgupta said the special session of the Assembly would hold a detailed discussion on their findings, asserting it was the government's responsibility to place its shortcomings before the people.
Dasgupta said the previous TMC government had kept the reports pending. The present dispensation was fulfilling its constitutional obligation by placing them before the Assembly, he told the House, as he tabled the CAG reports in the Assembly from fiscals 2020-21 to 2024-25.
Persistent revenue deficits
One of the CAG reports finds that West Bengal's Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) grew at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9.57 per cent between 2015-16 and 2024-25 but the state continued to post revenue deficits throughout the period.
The state's GSDP rose from Rs 7.97 lakh crore in 2015-16 to Rs 18.15 lakh crore in 2024-25, the State Finances Audit Report said.
The state recorded a GSDP growth of 9.91 per cent in 2024-25 alone, it said. Despite the economic growth, the state recorded revenue deficits every year during the decade, while the fiscal deficit expanded at a CAGR of 12.83 per cent, the Comptroller and Auditor General said.
On budgetary management, the report said the state incurred expenditure of Rs 3,19,975.79 crore against a budget provision of Rs 3,90,638.04 crore, resulting in savings of Rs 70,662.25 crore, or 18.09 per cent of the total allocation.
The report noted excess expenditure of Rs 13,486.92 crore under seven grants and one appropriation during 2024-25 that requires legislative regularisation. It also said unregularised excess expenditure for the period from 2009 to 2024 stood at Rs 57,263.62 crore.Reviewing the implementation of Centrally Sponsored Schemes, the CAG said the state received Rs 5,889.49 crore as the Centre's share during 2024-25, while Rs 8,296.51 crore remained unspent in Single Nodal Agency bank accounts as on March 31, 2025.
It further noted that only 14 of the 67 Centrally Sponsored Schemes had been onboarded to the SNA-SPARSH platform by the end of the financial year.Loss due to flipkart
Rs 12.86 crore loss to government
Another CAG report that was tabled flagged how the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation Limited suffered a loss of Rs 12.86 crore while allotting land to e-commerce major Flipkart's logistics arm Instakart Services at its Haringhata Industrial Park in Nadia district.
The report noted that WBIDCL, the state's nodal agency for industry development, incurred the loss because it computed the base price of the land without accounting for large water bodies within the project site, in deviation from its own pricing policy.
The finding is part of the CAG's 2024 report on Public Sector Undertakings for the period ending March 31, 2023, which was tabled in the Assembly by the BJP government. The Haringhata campus, which houses Flipkart's largest fulfilment centre in the country, is central to the company's investment in West Bengal. The facility, with 50 lakh cubic feet of storage across six mezzanine levels, was inaugurated in 2022.
Scrutinising the deal in December 2022, CAG found the Haringhata Industrial Park's layout plan included 55.89 acres of water body that could not be used for industrial development.
This meant the actual allocable land at the park was only 302.299 acres, not the full 358.19 acres on which WBIDCL had calculated its per-acre price.
As per the Corporation's own pricing policy, the base price should be arrived at by dividing the acquisition cost plus 10 per cent administrative charge by the allocable land only, the CAG report highlighted. Recalculated this way, the base price works out to Rs 75.23 lakh per acre, against the Rs 63.49 lakh per acre actually charged.
On this basis, the lease premium payable by Instakart for 109.12 acres should have been Rs 82.09 crore, while WBIDCL collected only Rs 69.23 crore, leaving a shortfall of Rs 12.86 crore, the report flagged.
The state government in May 2023 said the agency's board had approved the Rs 63.49 lakh per acre base price in July 2018 after detailed discussion and the Cabinet had also cleared the allotment on this basis. The CAG, however, did not accept this, noting the reply did not explain the reasons for not following WBIDCL's own pricing policy, and reiterated that 55.89 acres were water bodies and cannot be allotted for industrial development.
Swasthya Sathi scheme
The CAG has also flagged multiple deficiencies in the implementation of the erstwhile TMC government's flagship Swasthya Sathi health insurance scheme, including excess payments to empanelled private hospitals, anomalies in beneficiary enrolment, weak grievance redressal and failure to enforce contractual provisions against insurance companies.
The observations are contained in the Performance and Compliance Audit Report of the CAG for the year ended March 2023. The performance audit covered the implementation of the scheme during 2018-19 to 2022-23.
The audit found that the State Nodal Agency (SNA) had neither prepared comprehensive guidelines nor annual action plans for achieving the scheme's objectives as of July 2024.
It said the number of families enrolled under the scheme as of March 2023 was around 10 per cent higher than the number of ration card-holding families in the state, as per the Public Distribution System records of August 2023, raising the possibility of benefits reaching ineligible beneficiaries.
The report also noted that the Aadhaar-linking exercise initiated in October 2021 remained incomplete, affecting compliance with verification protocols and increasing the risk of multiple enrolments.
According to the audit, 31 of the 50 private empanelled hospitals test-checked had been assigned higher grades than warranted by their infrastructure, services and sanctioned bed strength. As a result, these healthcare providers received higher package rates than admissible, leading to excess payments of Rs 14.48 crore. Meanwhile, the report said against the requirement of empanelling 3,038 healthcare providers (HCPs) to serve 2.43 crore beneficiary families, only 2,605 HCPs had been empanelled, limiting beneficiaries' choice of hospitals and affecting service delivery.
It also noted that National Insurance Company and Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company had not refunded Rs 29.78 crore to the SNA for failing to achieve the mandated claim ratio under their agreements.
The CAG said inadequate budgetary support for the scheme forced the SNA to avail loans of Rs 721.95 crore during 2020-22, resulting in interest payments of Rs 10.85 crore.
'Non-functional PM CARES oxygen plants during Covid
In yet another case, more than half of the PSA oxygen plants installed under PM CARES and CSR initiatives in West Bengal during Covid were either uncommissioned or non-functional as of December 2023, while ventilators and oxygen concentrators were found lying idle at two government hospitals, a CAG report said.
It also flagged deficiencies in the utilisation of Covid-related funds. Of the total amount released under the Emergency COVID Response Package-II (ECRP-II), Rs 659.28 crore (65 per cent) remained unspent as of March 2022, it stated.
Also, Rs 462.05 crore released as State COVID untied funds -- gap funding for pandemic responses not covered by strict central packages -- also remained unutilised.
The findings are part of the CAG's report on public health infrastructure and management of health services in West Bengal.
BJP hits out at TMC
While tabling the 28 reports, Dasgupta termed it a serious constitutional impropriety and told Speaker Rathin Bose that "for some known and unknown reasons" the reports had not been tabled for several years.
"The CAG reports have constitutional importance. Every government has the responsibility to place them before the Assembly..
"We want to hold a special session in the coming days where these CAG reports will be discussed. It is very important. It is our duty to place the government's mistakes before the people," he said.
As the reports were placed in the House, Industries Minister Tapas Roy said, "What have you done Bobby?" in a quip at former minister Firhad Hakim.
India Secular Front MLA Naushad Siddique alleged corruption at the "highest levels" during the previous regime and demanded stringent action for all those who would be found guilty in the audit findings. He also demanded compensation for those affected in cases flagged by the audit reports.
After coming to power, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari had announced that all pending CAG reports would be placed before the Assembly. It was part of the BJP government's promise of greater financial transparency.
He had also said that wherever audit established evidence of graft, the government would recommend to the governor that sanction be granted for registration of FIRs, irrespective of the stature of those involved.
