The Comptroller and Auditor General has found several irregularities, including fund diversion, in the implementation of Centre's flagship programme Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, RKVY by state governments from 2007 to 2013. The CAG in its report laid in Parliament said, financial management under the scheme was deficient as many instances of excess expenditure, inadmissible expenditure were noticed and an important area of concern was submission of incorrect utilisation certificates by states. It said, even though expenditure was not incurred or partially incurred out of the grant received under the scheme, the states submitted UCs for the entire grant received by them and as a result, expenditure incurred at a given point of time remained un-ascertainable. Against an allocation of Rs 32,460.45 crore during 2007-08 and 2012-13, an amount of Rs 30,873.38 crore was released to 28 states and seven Union Territories. CAG said that, instances of inflated figures of expenditure was noted and as of September 2013, UCs for an amount of 2,610.07 crore rupees were outstanding from 26 states and short release of funds of Rs 154.65 crore was noticed in three states adversely affecting the project delivery. CAG said that excess expenditure of Rs 106.13 crore without the approval of State level Sanctioning Committee was noticed in 50 projects in seven states and grants of Rs 759.03 crore were found parked in personal ledger accounts, personal deposit accounts, savings bank account, fixed deposit account in 11 states. It said, in four states of Haryana, Maharasthra, Meghalaya and West Bengal, diversion of RKVY funds of Rs 114.45 crore to other schemes and agency were noticed. Besides, the CAG also noticed various cases of delay in release of funds at various levels from state government to nodal agency and from nodal agency to implementing agency. Observing that monitoring of the scheme has been largely satisfactory, CAG said, monitoring and evaluation of the scheme both at the central and state levels needs strengthening in a big way. The Agriculture Ministry engaged the National Institute of Rural Development , NIRD and 25 other consultants for monitoring and evaluation of implementation of the scheme. The report said, RKVY remained without any financial scrutiny through the internal audit of the ministry and monitoring mechanism was not very effective. It said, though guidelines stressed monitoring at state level only, ministry nevertheless created mechanisms,which it could use gainfully. CAG said, the manner in which projects under RKVY were sanctioned without requisite pilot studies and regardless of local variabilities, compromised its intended bottom-up approach and resulted in a scramble for project approvals. The sheer number of projects, without exercise of informed judgement, made the programme bulky and unwieldy leading to under-performance.It said, the ministry must take necessary steps to rectify the deficiencies pointed out by Audit to bring RKVY on track. The audit was undertaken to gain assurance as to whether the states had implemented the scheme in an efficient manner and the Union Agriculture Ministry had adequately discharged its role in administering the scheme at the national level.RKVY was launched in the 11th Five Year Plan amid faltering agriculture growth in the previous decades. The agri-scheme was to act as a catalyst in incentivising states so that 4 per cent annual agriculture growth could be achieved.