The Hindu : Karnataka News : Probe ordered into misuse of funds

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Friday, Jun 26, 2009
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Karnataka

Karnataka

Probe ordered into misuse of funds

Staff Correspondent

Seeking action: Chitradurga Zilla Panchayat members staging a walkout during the general meeting on Thursday.

Chitradurga: Chief Executive Officer of the Chitradurga Zilla Panchayat Range Gowda has said that allegation of misuse of Backward Region Grant Fund (BRGF) will be investigated and criminal cases booked against officials found guilty.

A committee comprising district-level officials and zilla panchayat members will be constituted to look into the allegation and based on the report submitted by the committee, action will be initiated against officials, he has said.

Mr. Range Gowda announced this at the general meeting of the zilla panchayat on Thursday after D. Guruswamy, a member, presented statistics on the alleged misuse of BRGF. Mr. Guruswamy said that the Government had earmarked Rs. 1.8 lakh each for 184 gram panchayats in the district for procuring equipment for various projects and publicity materials.

In one gram panchayat, Rs. 64,000 was spent for buying publicity material, the market price of which was only Rs. 18,000, he claimed.

“The supplier had claimed that he had given 300 calendars of Rs. 64 each to the panchayat. But he had actually supplied only 100 calendars,” Mr. Guruswamy said and added that same was the case with several other items. He said that four brooms were bought at Rs. 500 and four axes at Rs. 1,000.

Members demanded an explanation from zilla panchayat president L.B. Rajashekharappa and Mr. Range Gowda in this regard. When both of them failed to give convincing reply, all the members staged a walkout from the meeting. Later, Mr. Range Gowda convinced them to attend the meeting.

After an hour-long discussion on the issue, Mr. Range Gowda announced that the allegation of misuse of BRGF would be investigated. Earlier, the zilla panchayat passed a resolution requesting the State Government to institute CoD inquiry into all projects taken up by the zilla panchayat engineering department as there were allegations of misuse of funds.

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