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Irregularities in fund utilisation: panel

By Our Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM July 16. The Petitions Committee of the State Legislature has found that large sums of money advanced by the local bodies for projects taken up under the People's Plan Campaign were still remaining with the project conveners who were supposed to execute the works.

The committee, in its report submitted to the State Assembly today, said an amount of not less than Rs. 92 lakhs was remaining with the project conveners in various local bodies in Pathanamthitta district alone.

The local bodies have been permitted to advance up to Rs. 50,000 or 50 per cent of the project cost (whichever is less) to a convener before the works are actually launched. In several cases, the works have not even been started even three or four years after the money had been advanced.

Briefing presspersons after the presentation of the report in the Assembly, the committee chairman, Mammen Mathai, said the performance audit conducted into the funds utilisation by the local bodies soon after the UDF Government had come to power had actually revealed only the tip of the funds misappropriation iceberg. "You have to inspect each project to realise the scale of misappropriation that has taken place,'' he said.

Schemes shown as `in progress' by the secretaries of several local bodies were yet to start. In some cases, schemes for which funds had been advanced to the conveners three or four years ago had been abandoned by the local bodies. There were even bogus names on the list of conveners, Mr. Mathai said.

The committee urged the Government to initiate action to recover the money advanced to the conveners and also bring to book the panchayat secretaries who had facilitated the misappropriation.

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