Bureaucrats stonewall Punjab CM’s probe into Rs 10.28 crore rip-off
CHANDIGARH: Punjab bureaucrats have stonewalled an inquiry ordered by the Bhagwant Mann authorities right into a Rs 10.28 crore rip-off involving Ferozepur’s Congress ex-MLA Parminder Singh Pinki.
Performing on a criticism of Aam Aadmi Occasion’s Ferozepur MLA Ranbir Singh Bhullar, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann ordered an inquiry in August 2022 into the Rs 10.28 crore compensation awarded to farmers of 37 villages that had been affected by floods in 2019. The vast majority of the poor farmers didn’t obtain any monetary support.
The inquiry was a part of the AAP authorities’s “Zero Tolerance In direction of Corruption” coverage.
The Monetary Commissioner, Income KAP Sinha, on September 2, 2022, directed the then DC Ferozepur Amrit Singh IAS to look into the matter and promptly ship a report back to the federal government. The DC sat on the file for about 4 months and in December 2022, requested the tehsildar Sukhbir Kaur to conduct an inquiry below the Zero Tolerance In direction of Corruption coverage.
As many as 11 ‘patwaris’ (discipline income officers) had been referred to as for questioning by the tehsildar. They informed the tehsildar, “We don’t have any file of the distribution of the compensation.” Nonetheless, tehsildar Sukhbir Kaur counting on the annual audit report and the utilisation certificates issued by her predecessor Lakhwinder Singh despatched inconclusive findings to her superiors.
When contacted by indanarrative.com, the tehsildar disclosed that the matter was now being appeared into by District Income Officer (DRO) Arvind Verma. The DRO refused to speak to this correspondent.
The then tehsildar Lakhwinder Singh couldn’t reply whether or not he distributed the compensation as per the crop harm Evaluation Register (AR). Sources preserve the AR is lacking from income data. Nonetheless, no FIR has been registered concerning the lacking register.
As per norms, crop harm compensation is to be instantly credited to the financial institution accounts of the recognized farmers, as talked about in AR, via account payee cheques. The farmers usually are not paid in money to test the potential of fraud.
Very lately, on March 9, the Ferozepur Commissioner D.S. Mangat wrote a letter to the incumbent DC Rajesh Dhiman telling him that his workplace had not acquired the inquiry report back to date although the CM sought a immediate response in August 2022.
Ex-MLA Pinki neither replied to questions despatched to him about his reported involvement within the rip-off. He didn’t reply a number of calls made by this correspondent both.