The Hindu : State networks all financial transactions

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 10, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka

State networks all financial transactions

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE July 9. After the successful implementation of `Bhoomi', computerisation of land records, the Government on Wednesday launched `Khajane', "one of the most important e-governance initiatives'' for online data capturing and central consolidation of the State's financial transactions through a networked system, for the first time in the country.

The Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna, who inaugurated the new scheme, said this was another milestone in the State's journey towards total transparency, and simplification of procedures for the citizens.

`Kaveri', an initiative to computerise property registration, would be the next e-governance initiative to be launched. This would be ready by September this year. In January 2004, `Integrated Check-post', under the Commercial Taxes Department, would become a reality.

With Khajane, the Treasury Department would speed up receipt and payment transactions and render proper accounts of the financial transactions to the Accountant-General and the zilla panchayats every month. The 31 district treasuries and 184 taluk and sub-taluk-level treasuries in the State would now carry out annual transactions of over Rs.50,000 crores on this network. In the pre-Khajane method, this called for over two-crore instruments.

Mr. Krishna said that with Khajane, systemic deficiencies such as overdrawal of funds by the drawing officers, fraudulent withdrawals, wrong classification of expenditure, non-reconciliation of accounts between the Treasury and the departments, delays in submission of monthly accounts, delays in settling claims at treasuries, overpayment of pensions and delays in social security pension payment, would all become a thing of the past.

The project is being implemented by several agencies and institutions. The Software Technology Parks India is the network provider, while the CMC is the system provider. The nerve centre of Khajane, Treasury Network Management Centre, is located at Khanija Bhavan, where the main server is also housed. This is connected through a dedicated V-Sat link to the treasuries in the State. Any bill, in any treasury, will be cleared online after checking and validating the database in the central server. The Treasury Department sees about Rs. 23,000-crore receipts through 88 lakh transactions, and has paid Rs. 27,000 crores through 135 vouchers.

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