Hindu: Madurai: Sunday, September 24, 2017.
Scrutiny
through RTI indicates irregularities in the form of inflated bills and bills
from non-existent entities
Details
scrutinised through Right to Information (RTI) Act on money spent to conduct
elections in Madurai South Assembly constituency in 2016 has indicated widespread
irregularities, particularly in the form of inflated expenditure and bills from
reportedly non-existent business entities.
K. Hakkim, a
Madurai-based RTI activist, recently obtained permission through the Act to see
the expenditure records maintained at Madurai Corporation Zone 3’s Assistant
Commissioner Office, who acted as the Returning Officer (RO) of the
constituency. “I was shown only the accounts for Rs. 41.03 lakh spent directly
under the control of RO under one of the eight heads of accounts maintained for
election expenditure. For other expenditure, I was asked to approach
Collector’s office,” he said. The glaring things that got Mr. Hakkim’s
attention in perusing the roughly 2,600- page document, of which he managed to
get copies of 334 pages, were the expenditures on fuel and vehicles, flex
banners, postcards and food items.
Stating that Rs.
25.87 lakh was spent on salaries for 2,418 personnel deployed on election duty,
he said that another considerable chunk of Rs. 6.69 lakh was spent on fuel for
government vehicles or renting private vehicles. “Even if you apply a rough
calculation of Rs. 10 per kilometre, which is the usual rent charged by
vehicles, the officials seem to have travelled 66,900 km while the whole
constituency is just around 10 to 15 square kilometre,” he said.
Similarly, he
said that Rs. 1.06 lakh was spent on providing water cans, chairs and
tubelights in the 213 polling booths located in 56 locations on the election
day, which comes to an average of Rs. 500 per booth. “Since most booths are
located in schools, expectation is that chairs and tubelights would already be
available. If so, why Rs. 500 for one or two water cans,” he asked.
Importantly,
he alleged that at least three shops, from which bills were obtained to the
tune of Rs. 80,000 for printing flex banners, papers, post ards and stamps,
which were reportedly bought for Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral
Participation (SVEEP) awareness campaign, were non-existent.
“Postcards
and stamps would ideally be bought from post offices. However, postcards and
stamps worth Rs. 10,000 were bought from a seemingly non-existent stationery
shop,” he said, adding that Rs. 1 lakh was spent on hiring LED televisions, for
which only a hand-written voucher was available.
Similarly, he
pointed to Rs. 2 lakh spent on flex banners, Rs. 24,000 for making a polling
booth as model polling booth, and Rs. 22,500 as salary for those deployed in
booths to push wheelchairs for physically-challenged voters, which sounded
unreasonable.
“This is only
a fraction of the expenditure in just one of the 234 constituencies in Tamil
Nadu. My RTI requests to obtain expenditure at State and District level are
being stalled. A thorough audit and investigation is required,” he said.
A senior
official associated with District Election Office in the Collectorate during
election said that audits of election expenditure was conducted at three
different levels by the Local Fund Audit office in district, then by the audit
wing of Chief Electoral Officer in the State, and finally by the Accountant
General’s office.
The officer
acknowledged that the CEO’s office has already raised objections for lakhs of
rupees spent in 10 constituencies in the district, particularly those coming
under Madurai Corporation.