In a statement, the NPCC said the government has no money to pay the students’ post-Matric scholarship, the salary of the work charged employees and the terminal benefits of the government employees who were forced to retire from November 1, 2009 onwards. It went on to say that the government has been making lame excuses such as documentation and logistic problems for non-payment, but stated that ‘in reality its coffer has gone dry’.

The Congress claimed that the DAN Government is unable to release the development funds for the State’s work programmes whereby development activities have come to a stand still and there is no money to maintain the State’s assets because major chunk of the non-plan fund has gone to debt servicing with the State’s outstanding loans crossing Rs 8,000 crore.

Stating that the DAN Government is back to the business of knocking on the door of the Planning Commission for special plan assistance (SPA), it maintained that even in Centrally sponsored schemes like the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), it has not credited a single rupee into the accounts of the school management and development committees (SMDC) despite having directed them to open their accounts way back in April 2009.

The Congress release further said whenever the issue of shortage of fund is raised, the DAN Government rues the fact that the State Government is over-burdened with over 65 per cent of the plan and non-plan expenditure going to the salaries of its employees as against the 35 per cent restriction imposed by the 13th Finance Commission. Moreover, despite new post creation restricted under the TFC award, it accused the DAN Govt of ‘surreptitiously indulging’ in rampant backdoor appointments after retrenching over 3,000 employees in one go that has crossed 6,000 of late.

Stating that the DAN Govt had got the ‘golden opportunity’ to bring down the plan and non-plan expenditure to the TFC’s prescribed limit of 35 per cent, the Cong alleged that instead of streamlining the entire system of over-employment on need-based, it resorted to ‘over-indulgence in backdoor appointment’ with an eye for electoral gain in the next election.