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.
