On Thursday, a senior official from the Ministry of Home Affairs said that the Centre will not allocate any additional funds to the Kerala government after it failed to produce utilisation certificates for 50% of funds allotted after the 2018 floods.
Reportedly, the State government had asked for an additional Rs 2,000 crore for flood damages in 2019 from the National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF).
The official stated that around ₹ 3,048.39 crores were allocated to Kerala in December 2018. The State government only spent a little over ₹900 crores. No utilisation certificate has been provided for the balance around ₹2,100 crores. Which means more than half of the sanctioned amount remains unspent.
Additionally, no utilization certificate had been produced for the first tranche of funds yet. Hence, more funds could only be released after the recipient of the utilisation certificate.
The Principal Secretary of Kerala’s Revenue & Disaster Management Department, however, complained that the Central Government did not consider the memorandum for 2019 Kerala floods. He also stated that whether unutilized funds remained with the State government wasn’t a matter of primary concern.
The 2018 Kerala floods had claimed more than 400 lives. It was one of the worst floods in the 90 years. More than 100 people lost their lives in the 2019 floods.
