Dehradun: A report prepared by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) for the year ended March 2017 which was tabled in the state assembly on Thursday claimed that the declaration made by the Uttarakhand government that the state’s rural areas were Open Defecation Free (ODF) was incorrect. In the section titled ‘Compliance Audit’ of the construction of toilets under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin), the report states, “The planning and implementation of the Swachh Bharat Mission by the state was found inadequate as against the target of 546 community sanitary complexes, only 63 and out of total 4,485 solid and liquid waste management structures, only 50 were constructed up to March 2017. The declaration of state as Open Defecation Free in May 2017 was incorrect.”The CAG auditors also found “several weaknesses in the planning, implementation and monitoring mechanism of the Namami Gange programme in the state.” In a performance audit of the Uttarakhand Pejyal Nigam, the authority tasked with laying sewage lines and maintaining sewage treatment plants in order to facilitate cleaning of Ganga, the CAG refuted claims by the department that all 265 villages in 132 gram panchayats along the Ganga had been declared ‘Open Defecation Free’ in May last year.The auditors said that they physically verified 1143 of the latrines built in villages and found that 41 of them were not constructed while 34 were still under construction. The audit also found 71% of toilets being built without technical assistance, 70% being constructed outside the residential premises and 19% without water facilities.The report also pointed at a mismatch between the detailed project reports (DPRs) of Forestry Intervention of Ganga (FIG) and approved annual action plan of operation (APO). According to the data, the APO for 2016-17, covering 9674 hectare (ha) area at a cost of Rs 84.47 crore was proposed against the coverage area of 32,633 hectare targeted in the DPR during the same period at a cost of Rs 358.91 crore. However, the central government further cut the proposed plan size and approved coverage of just 1521 ha area at a cost of Rs 15.93 crore with a cut of 92% in natural landscaping, 98% in agriculture landscaping and urban landscaping each and 95% in case of conservation interventions.The report added that funds ranging from 24.56% to 58.71% were lying unspent due to non-utilisation by executing agencies in the period 2012-13 to 2016-17.It further alleged that the STPs built in Haridwar and Rishikesh were inadequate in handling the discharge resulting in untreated waste being discharged into the Ganga and the STPs at Devprayag and Rishikesh were under-utilised due to deficient planning and lack of co-ordination between executing agencies. “Sixty-five of the 112 nallahs that were identified in priority towns are still to be tapped resulting in discharge of 26.292 million litre per day of sewage directly into the river Ganga or its tributaries,” the report said.The almost 200-page report came as an embarrassment to the state government which had in June last year announced that Uttarakhand had become the fourth ODF state in the country.Reacting to the report’s findings, finance minister Prakash Pant said, “The points raised in the CAG report would be soon taken up with the concerned officials and corrective action would be taken.”

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