The Public Accounts Committee of the Lok Sabha has recommended greater recourse to private printers as one of the measures to reduce wasteful expenditure on Government publications. In its report laid on the table of the House to-day [November 11, New Delhi], the committee has also urged that the expenditure on publications should be included in the budgets of the individual Ministries and departments instead of the publication branch of the Ministry of Works, Housing and Supply. This, according to the committee, should discourage “the present tendency towards reckless overprinting and wasteful expenditure.” The 22-member committee, headed by Mr. M.R. Masani, noted that the value of unsold stocks of publications with the publication branch had risen from Rs. 65.68 lakhs in 1962-63 to Rs. 80.19 lakhs in 1964-65. The report further reveals that between 1962-63 and 1964-65 publications of the value of R.s. 10.27 lakhs had been weeded out. The percentage of copies weeded out to the number of copies printed was more than 50 in several instances, and as high as 93 per cent in the case of a pamphlet for IAS (Supplementary) recruitment examination, 1956. The committee found that the “unfortunate” practice of overprinting and consequent wasteful expenditure was prevalent in almost all the Ministries and departments of the Central Government. It has recommended a series of measures to ensure that the print orders are realistic and there are no delays in their compliance, which also result in wasteful expenditure.
