Even though Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya has claimed that the Examiner of Local Accounts — a wing of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) — has certified the annual accounts of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) as “true and fair”, the scrutiny of the report shows that the KMC accounts have several shortcomings.

Significantly, the audit report, after mentioning six objections in the accounting system, said that the annual accounts except for the shortcomings mentioned in the report is “true and fair.”

Bhattacharya, however, claimed that the accounts of KMC have been certified by the CAG and the allegations of any such shortcomings are false. The shortcomings that audit report mentions include the exclusion of provident fund accounts of KMC employees from its financial statements. The report also mentioned that the inventory list was not reconciled with the purchase and consumption since physical verification of all the stores was not made available.

The report also stated that Kolkata Environmental Improvement Project (KEIP) is a project division of KMC which neither created assets nor is it reflected in the separate accounts for KEIP annexed to the Annual Accounts.

Apart from this, the auditor has mentioned in the report that the income and expenditure accounts do not reflect the receipts and expenditure objective head-wise. And, therefore, according to the report, expenditure like salary/wages, paid/payable, consumption of stores, power and fuel, employers’ contribution to CPF, payment to transporters are not identifiable from the Annual Accounts.

Significantly, the scrutiny of the accounts revealed that the KMC never published its annual accounts to the stakeholders, which violates Section 163(3) of the KMC Act 1980.

... contd.