Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee Saturday demanded a white paper on the utilisation of District Mineral Foundation (DMF) funds in the state, alleging large-scale irregularities and diversion of resources meant for mining-affected communities.
The party demanded that the government publish district-wise details of DMF collections, project approvals, expenditure and unspent balances since 2015-16 and immediately recover all expenditure identified by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) as irregular or inadmissible.
Addressing a press conference at Congress Bhavan here, senior Congress leader Sudarshan Das also sought fixing of responsibility on officials and authorities found accountable for the irregularities. Das said the 30 DMFs in Odisha had collected Rs 26,602.66 crore between 2015-16 and 2023-24, against which projects worth Rs 25,969.87 crore were approved.
However, actual expenditure by March 2024 stood at only Rs 15,817.56 crore, accounting for 59.46 per cent of the funds collected. He said DMF resources were primarily meant for the welfare and development of people and areas affected by mining activities and for mitigating the adverse impact of mining.
The CAG findings had raised serious questions over the planning, approval and utilisation of DMF funds and the issue was not merely one of financial irregularities but directly concerned the welfare of mining-affected communities, Das said.
Citing the CAG findings, he said `983.32 crore had been spent on 2,224 projects in 976 villages in Kendujhar and Sundargada that were not identified as mining-af fected areas.
At the same time, he claimed that no DMF project had been taken up in 488 directly mining-affected villages and 96 indirectly mining-affected villages.