The Hindu: Vijayawada: Tuesday,
October 18, 2016.
The efforts
being made by the State government to suppress the huge expenditure behind the
CII-Partnership Summit held in Visakhapatnam, authorised merely with
inter-departmental memos, is tantamount to “criminal conspiracy,” former
Legislative Assembly Speaker Nadendla Manohar has said.
Addressing
the media here on Monday, Mr. Manohar said information on expenditure for the
summit acquired using the provisions of the RTI Act had turned out to be
shocking.
The
government, which often complained of resource crunch, spent Rs. 28 crore for
the summit where the government had signed 361 MoUs involving Rs. 4,76,878
crore with the potential of generating 10,27,121 jobs.
The status of
these MoUs and jobs was unknown even after nine months, but Ministers were
already talking about the second round.
Mr. Manohar
said the attitude of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and senior officers,
who violated several administrative and procedural norms, could only be
described as “irresponsible.”
Mr. Manohar,
along with PCC RTI Cell chairman P. Lakshmi Narayana, provided to the media
details of the money spent for the Partnership Summit.
The
expenditure included Rs. 7.4 crore spent for temporary air-conditioned tents to
hold the meeting. As much as Rs. 1 crore was spent to place an advertisement in
an international daily and crores were paid to several star and other hotels
and to transport companies for bills during the three days.
A
comparatively huge amount of Rs. 1 crore was spent for the song and dance
programmes at the inauguration of the summit, Mr. Manohar said. He said the
government was often bragging of transparency and good administration, but
neither was evident in the organising of the summit.
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