Thiruvananthapuram: The central government has put Kerala in a tight spot by refusing to allocate funds for the school mid-day meal scheme citing the amount spent the previous year. The Centre’s contention is that the Rs 209 crore spent in 2021-22 has not been recorded in the Public Financial Management System (PFMS), a centralized monitoring system under the Union Finance Ministry.

Without recording this, the subsidy for this year’s mid-day meal scheme will not be released, the Centre clarified. With this, Kerala has been forced to reallocate the Rs 209 crores disbursed earlier and record this in the system. 

PFMS has begun to monitor the utilization of centrally-funded schemes. When it was made mandatory in 2021-22, Kerala joined in. However, the Centre withheld the Rs 132 crores for the mid-day meal that year.

The state government has spent Rs 209 crores including this amount and its own share of Rs 77 crores with the belief that this amount would be repaid later. After a two-year wait, the Centre sanctioned Rs 132 crore in March this year, clarifying that this would be the reimbursement for 2021-22.

Despite the state education department writing to the PFMS pointing out that the amount has been given as a reimbursement and asking how the same amount can be distributed a second time for the same purpose. The Centre, however, has responded that there is no way around recording the amount in PFMS.

Kerala has submitted the certificate of expenditure incurred for the year 2021-22. The Finance and Education departments sent a letter jointly. Kerala repeatedly argued that reallocating prior expenditure to the account was unusual and wrong but to no avail.

The state government is gearing up for an extraordinary spending spree to solve this problem. An agreement has been reached between the finance and the education departments in this regard. But the challenge is getting the amount allocated back to the exchequer. A high-level meeting will be held soon to discuss the issues relating to the mid-day meal plan.

A single nodal account in the name of the Director of General Education is linked to PFMS. In addition to this, the Finance Department should allocate Rs 209 crore for the mid-day meal in 2021-22. This amount then needs to be transferred in the name of the Director of General Education.

With this, PFMS will record that the government funds have been allocated and spent. The challenge here is  getting the Rs 209 crore back to the exchequer as this amount has already been spent.