Times of India: Madurai: Saturday, September 23, 2017.
An RTI petition has revealed that expenses worth Rs 41 lakh (41,03,122) were incurred for conducting the assembly election on May 16 last year in Madurai South constituency, one of the smallest in Madurai. This happens to be only one part of the spending and it has been found that bills have been generated from shops that could not be traced.
K Hakkim, founder of the People's Awareness Trust (RTI), said that election expenditure had been made under various headings from 101 AA to 108 AA. He had obtained information on expenditure under section 106 AA, which pertains to a particular constituency where the returning officer handles the funds. Others are controlled by the election officer or district collector. Details were given to him on September 15 in reply to an RTI filed seeking information on August 8 this year.
Madurai south constituency had 213 polling booths in 56 polling stations. As many as 2,418 workers were used and 7,550 man hours spent for the entire process for which they were paid a salary of Rs 25,86,665. This constitutes 63 per cent of the total expenditure of the constituency. Fuel expenditure for the government vehicles used amounted to Rs 1,62,438 and vehicle hire charges added up to Rs 4,38,179, whereas the expenditure of the vehicles used in the elections totalled Rs 6,69,137. He said that a distance of 66,913 km could have been covered in a luxury vehicle to incur these expenses, but the area of the Madurai south constituency was only 14 kms. "The fuel should have been used to patrol the constituency 4,779 times with the vehicles to touch these expenses," he said.
Many of the bill though hand written have been duly signed by the concerned returning officer. Though the total expenditure ran into 2,600 pages, Hakkim had been able to obtain only 334 pages after paying Rs 668 as charges for viewing these papers as it costs Rs 2 per page. One of the bills stated that postcards and stamps were purchased in Packiam Palporul Angadi, in 12/3A Ezhukadal Street, Amman Sannidhi, Madurai - 625001. ``What is surprising is that the government has purchased postcards and stamps from a shop for Rs 10,440 whereas an ordinary citizen would buy them from the post office,'' he said. "On trying to verify the address of the above-mentioned shop, we found a well-known textile showroom standing in its place," he said. Another shop called Styley Flex was also not found at the address mentioned in the bill and so was Kumaran print Xerox in West Veli Street.
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