Times
of India: Meerut: Wednesday, 16 September 2015.
The Allahabad
high court on Tuesday ordered Meerut municipal corporation authorities to
explain whether any audit was conducted in the civic body in the last five
years, and if it was, then produce audit reports of all development works
undertaken by the civic agency in the last five years. The HC threatened that
the agency will have an investigation by CAG if it failed to comply with its
order.
The court was
hearing a PIL filed by RTI activist Lokesh Khurana. The corporation's chief auditor
said that he was not provided any file for audit against which he had also
moved the high court. The auditor said that even after directions of the HC, he
was given only a few files that, too, exhibited gross misappropriation of
funds.
Shams-Uz-Zaman,
Khurana's lawyer in HC, said, "The HC has given two weeks to the
corporation authorities to reply in the matter and provide audit reports along
with affidavits. The next hearing will be held on September 29."
"In
June, we had filed an RTI application seeking information on the audit of
development works undertaken by the civic agency in the last five years
beginning from 2010, but the corporation demanded Rs 41,872 as expenses for
providing the information, following which we approached the HC and filed a
PIL."
A Nagar Nigam
official, who did not wish to be quoted, told TOI that in the last five years,
funds worth several hundred crore of rupees had been allocated to the civic
body by the state urban development ministry, the Central government under its
various development schemes and also for the infrastructure projects under the
13th finance commission.
Chief
municipal auditor Sachchidanand Tripathi told TOI, "When I was deputed as
auditor for Nagar Nigam in 2010, I found that only pre-audit was done by the
account section, which is not a part of audit and just part of book-keeping. To
my sheer surprise, I was not provided with any document about the projects even
till one year after I had joined despite the fact I had sent numerous reminders
to the municipal commissioner regarding the same. When I informed the state
government of this, I was transferred in December 2011. I approached the high
court and got a stay order on my transfer. HC also directed the commissioner to
provide me with the files to audit them."
Tripathi
added, "After the HC order, the then municipal commissioner, Chandra
Prakash Tripathi, provided me a few files in February 2012. I found a lot of
irregularities and misappropriation of funds and forward them to municipal
commissioner with my objections. After that no file was forwarded to me. In
March 2012, the new municipal commissioner, Rajkumar Sachan, too followed into
his predecessor's footsteps. Since then till May 2015, I was not provided even
a single file for audit. In May 2015, I went to the HC and prayed for giving me
work as the MMC officials were continuously misleading councillors that I was
sitting idle at my office while drawing salary without any work."
Municipal
commissioner SK Dubey could not be contacted for him comment despite many
efforts.
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