Huge under-recovery of dues from defence land occupants

Cadre shortage to blame; massive loss to the exchequer

Under-recovery of dues from over four lakh private and official occupants of defence land across the country, accruing from rent, electricity, water and other services, may have resulted in losses running into hundreds of crores to the exchequer over the past decade.

Minutes of a meeting held last March between the Military Engineer Services (MES) Engineer-in-Chief and the All-India (MES) Barrack & Stores Cadre Association reveal that the issue was taken up by the Association which sought immediate intervention.

The under-recovery has been attributed to acute manpower shortage in the Barrack and Stores Cadre under the MES. The cadre discharges the responsibility of revenue and accounting matters, including procurement and billing for rent, water and electricity consumed by service personnel, civilian officers/staff and private parties.

The Defence Ministry did not respond to queries raised by The Hindu on whether there has been non-recovery of dues owing to manpower shortage.

The document reveals that the same issue had been taken up with the Engineer-in-Chief (E-in-C) at the meetings conducted in 2012 and 2013. Subsequently, the then E-in-C had issued directions that a separate case for the Barrack and Stores Cadre for one-time filling up of all existing vacancies at the direct intake level of various posts up to the supervisor level would be taken up with the Defence Ministry. However, there was no progress in this direction.

Raised several times

Minutes of the meeting reveal that the issue has been flagged on many occasions in the past several years. It said that in March 2014, the actual cadre strength stood at only about 850 against the sanctioned capacity of over 3,000 posts.

Highlighting the issue, the officer initially took up the matter within the department, citing several specific cases where the dues had not been recovered. Not satisfied with the progress in the matter, he wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last December, claiming that the MES was not able to recover about Rs. 2,200 crore every year.

Terming it a “revenue scam in MES,” the officer quantified the loss taking into account the average fixed charges for rent, electricity and water consumption in both the government and private occupants’ categories.

While the total amount recoverable per year stood at Rs. 2,746 crore, the officer claimed that only about 20 per cent was presently being recovered.