CHANDIGARH: The Haryana government has now approved Rs 15 crore from the budget to spruce up the government bungalows of 14 Ministers including Nayab Singh Saini, the Chief Minister of Haryana.
The Assembly has now approved the money for maintenance work at the Chief Minister's house, ministers' office rooms, and their residences for the 2024-25 fiscal.
Despite crores of rupees being spent every year on the bungalows of many Ministers in the last five years, now the new Ministers have been allotted Rs 15 crore for the renovation, decoration, and repair of the government bungalows as per their choice.
This approval has been given recently in the Supplementary Estimates session of the Assembly.
According to a document, "Being a post-budget development, the provision could not be made in the Budget Estimates for 2024-25. Hence, the demand of Rs 15 crore is being made through Supplementary Estimates."
However, the opposition Congress did not oppose the proposal, and the demand sailed through without contention.
With the formation of the new BJP government led by Chief Minister Saini, a fresh allocation of offices and residences has been carried out. Among the 14 ministers, only State Energy Minister Anil Vij has declined official accommodation.
The responsibility for the renovation lies with the Public Works Department (PWD).
Defending the expenditure, PWD Minister Ranbir Gangwa said, "It is but natural that when new persons move in, they undertake renovation according to their preferences. These are old buildings, so repairs are needed every five years."
Asked about the yearly renovation during the previous regime, he claimed ignorance.
Repeated renovations, amounting to lakhs and crores, have been undertaken in the past five years alone in the same houses that have been allocated to new ministers -- and the spending shows no signs of slowing down.
Manohar Lal Khattar's second term began in October 2019, and in the next five months, by the end of the 2019-20 fiscal, Rs 64.84 lakh had already been spent. In 2020-21, this rose sharply to Rs 8.15 crore, followed by Rs 6.87 crore in 2021-22. In the subsequent years, Rs 3.30 crore (2022-23) and Rs 2.45 crore (2023-24) were spent, bringing the total expenditure over five years to more than Rs 21 crore.
Some ministers' residences stand out for their disproportionately high renovation costs. Former Deputy Chief Minister and PWD Minister Dushyant Chautala's house in Sector 2 underwent renovations four times -- in 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23, and 2023-24 -- at a total cost of Rs 3.52 crore. His uncle, Ranjit Singh, who held the Power portfolio, saw Rs 2.77 crore spent on four rounds of repairs at his Sector-3 residence during the same period. Former Sports Minister Sandeep Singh’s Sector 7 residence underwent renovations five times between 2019 and 2024, amounting to Rs 2.50 crore. Notably, Singh relinquished the Sports portfolio in January 2023 after facing sexual harassment allegations but continued to hold the Printing and Stationery Department until March 2024, when the new government dropped him.
Similarly, former Social Justice and Empowerment Minister OP Yadav’s Sector 7 house underwent four renovations between 2020 and 2024 at a total cost of Rs 1.61 crore. Even Speaker Gian Chand Gupta’s residence in Sector 2 received five rounds of renovations between 2019-20 and 2023-24, costing Rs 1.50 crore, according to a government reply to an unstarred question in the state Assembly.
Another notable case is of Devender Singh Babli’s Sector 7 house, where just two renovations in 2022-23 and 2023-24 cost Rs 1.42 crore. Babli, a minister from the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), was dropped after the BJP-JJP alliance collapsed earlier this year.
Interestingly, former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's Sector 7 residence underwent five rounds of renovations between 2019 and 2024, but the cumulative expense -- Rs 74.86 lakh -- was modest in comparison.