Manoj Prasad

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 It’s been a year since the Accountant General of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s state unit detected a case where the Drawing and Disbursement Officials (DDOs) of Jharkhand had withdrawn money from the treasury without submitting utilisation receipts. But so far, the state government has made little headway in the case and the DDOs who were responsible for this bungling remain unaffected.

The primary reason is that the state government never invoked the law against them. With the state government not cooperating, the AG, R.K. Verma, shot off another letter to the state Secretary (Finance), Raj Bala Verma, on March 31 reminding her of his previous letter dated June 11, 2007, and stating that during 2000-08, the DDOs had withdrawn Rs 6,293.7 crore on Abstract Contingent (AC) bills. But during the same period, they submitted Detail Contingent (DC) bills carrying receipts and vouchers of expenditure amounting to just Rs 43.80 crore. This left a balance of Rs 5855.68 crore as on March 31, 2008.

“Since there has been inordinate delay in submission of DC bills against outstanding AC bills of such a huge amount, it not only point towards gross financial irregularity but also entails cases of fraud and misappropriation of government money,” wrote the AG.

The AG letter said either the DDOs were recording a false certificate on the AC bills presented by them to the treasury or the treasury officers were making payment of AC bills presented after the 10th of a month in absence of such a certificate. “In either case, it would be a case of gross financial irregularity and may amount to criminal misconduct.”

The problem with the present state government is that the treasury code was violated year after year by more than 2,100 DDOs during the past eight years when this state saw five CMs and seven chief secretaries. Many of these DDOs who were Class I officers had retired making it difficult for it to prevail upon them to furnish details of expenditure of the money drawn by them.

Last month, responding to the AG Verma’s letter, Chief Secretary A.K. Basu circulated instructions to in-service DDOs across the state who were on the AG’s list of defaulters, asking them to submit their DC bills forthwith. But none of them has complied with his directive till date.

Basu told the Indian Express that he was now left with little option. “In case they do not abide by our directive by the end of this month, we will have to act tough and withhold their salaries and pension till such time they clear the account of the advance drawn by them.”