Ranchi: Government money meant for payment of scholarships to backward class students was embezzled in Jharkhand’s Chatra district. This was revealed in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India for 2018-19 that was tabled in the Jharkhand Assembly last week.Chatra district welfare officer (DWO) maintained 12 bank accounts in which Rs 95.05 crore was credited and Rs 85.85 crore withdrawn from it and misappropriated during 2013-18, the CAG report informed.
“Of these, payments worth Rs 70.01 crore made to individuals, agencies etc could not be vouchsafed in absence of related records,” it further informed, adding those records were not made available to the audit team and told those were destroyed in a fire.
“Audit observed that the remaining amount of Rs 15.84 crore was withdrawn and fraudulently transferred into bank accounts of NGOs, institutes, suppliers, teachers, officials and individuals,” the report further informed, indicating the extent of collusion among them.
The ST, SC, minority and backward class welfare department of the state government had instructed in May 2015 that scholarship would be paid directly to bank accounts of the beneficiary students through DBT (direct bank transfer) mode but the DWO instead asked the banks to make credit to accounts of certain schools. But those accounts were found to be belonging to some individuals, not schools.
The audit team also found that two persons who functioned as DWO Chatra between June 2017 and May 2018 fraudulently transferred Rs 6 crore to bank accounts of the cashier of the office, his relatives, NGOs, non-existent institutes and other individuals.
“It was also noticed that DWO, Chatra maintained cash books for only three of the 12 bank accounts even after the fire incident and never did reconciliation with banks till March 2020,” the CAG report further said.
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