It’s not just the Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh that is responsible for the massive financial irregularities in the UPA government’s ambitious National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scheme but also the former state government headed by then chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.

According to the Performance Audit Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), so far `6,706.86 crore in NRHM funds are unaccounted for; of this, `1,856.47 crore is unaccounted for between 2005 and 2007, when Mr Mulayam Singh was in power in UP.
The CAG’s exhaustive report, which has now been submitted to UP governor B.L. Joshi and is in the possession of this newspaper, is a detailed audit over a six-year period — April 2005 to March 2011 — during which `8,657.35 crore was spent by the Mayawati and Mulayam Singh governments on the NRHM. It is out of this amount that `6,706.86 crore remains unaccounted.
What is surprising is that the CAG report adds that in addition to the unaccounted `6.706.86 crore, there is another gap of `358.18 crore between the money sanctioned by the Central government and that received by the State Health Society (SHS), the nodal UP state government agency that was implementing the NRHM. “There is no information about where this money disappeared,” a top UP government official said. Significantly, the CAG report states: “There are serious financial irregularities in the NRHM project in UP which was granted the highest allocation of funds. These financial transactions need further investigation.”
The CBI is already conducting an investigation into the NRHM scheme and CBI sources claimed the CAG report will be extremely helpful in their probe. The agency is planning to register fresh FIRs in connection with the NRHM and question top state politicians and officials. Of the `6,7.06.86 crore unaccounted money, `4,938 crore was given as “pre-payments or advance for various works” of which there is no record.
The CAG unearthed large-scale irregularities in “awarding civil works... All projects were awarded in gross violation of guidelines laid down by the SC and CVC. There was total lack of transparency and monitoring.”