Assam Governor kept in dark about the embezzlement of funds of Cachar Zilla Parishad
SILCHAR, Aug 1: A 6 member delegation of BJP led by Kaushik Rai, president, Dr Rajdeep Roy, state spokesman, and others met JB Patnaik, Governor of Assam, at Raj Bhavan in Guwahati, on Wednesday, and presented a memorandum to him, highlighting the open loot of development funds in Cachar Zilla Parishad and DRDA and demanded CBI inquiry into their functioning from the financial year 2006–07 to 2012–13.
This was revealed at a press–briefing by Kaushik Rai along with other office bearers of the party. He said the Governor of Assam expressed his total ignorance about the siphoning of massive development funds of Cachar Zilla Parishad although BJP had sent memorandum to him on the subject through the Deputy Commissioner of the district on April 3 and June 12 of this year. The Governor, JB Patnaik, was apprised of how the funds were siphoned off and at the centre of accusation was Banhishikha Dutta, chief executive officer of Cachar Zilla Parishad, who despite all the charges, was still at bay. This embezzlement of funds, BJP leaders hammered, was carried out with the backing of the politicians and a section of bureaucrats who were now actively interfering into the process of departmental inquiry. Mention was also made about DRDA Cachar where magnitude of corruptions and financial irregularities were an open secret. It were the same syndicate of politicians and bureaucrats who were involved. It was more surprising that even after 5 months of the departmental inquiry, no specific information could be available about the accurate figures of funds of different heads and the exact amount of money utilized. Even the fund withdrawn and shown as advance against the junior engineers could be ascertained.
The memorandum at the same time raised its accusing finger at Dibyajyoti Barua who was the president of the elected Board of Cachar Zilla Parishad from 2006–07 to 2012–13. As such, Barua could not evade his responsibility in the misappropriation of funds. Yet, he was not subjected to any interrogation by the investigation agency, civil and police. It was further said that the audit report of CAG exposed several instances of huge development funds being paid under different heads through self cheques as well as by the CEO Banhishikha Dutta to the junior engineers. But, till date none of the junior engineers was served with show cause notice by the department or interrogated by the police.
Referring to DRDA, another hotspot of corruptions, they pointed out that in maintaining the accounts in respect of allocation of funds and their utilization, it was alleged, that there was neither transparency nor accountability. No rules and regulations were followed as specifically laid down in Assam Panchayat (Financial) Rule 2002 (8) and Sub Rule (4D) as well as Rule 8 (1–4C). The inquiry officers disclosed that several bank accounts and files were missing from the DRDA Cachar. Yet police was not interrogating Madhumita Choudhury, heading the DRDA.
The memorandum therefore impressed upon the Governor of Assam that he should intervene in these open loot of development funds in both Cachar Zilla Parishad and DRDA and cause CBI inquiry in order to unfathom the fathomless corruptions in both the departments and to bring the culprits to book and to give exemplary punishment to them. After giving a patient hearing and having been briefed about the corruptions in Zilla Parishad and DRDA of Cachar, the Governor assured the BJP leaders that he would visit the district in October and personally enquire into the investigations and their progress so far.
Source: The Sentinel 02.08.2013
