BANGALORE: The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has come under severe criticism from the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) Office in a report tabled in the legislature session on Monday.
The report, containing findings from audits of several urban local bodies, included a list of irregularities in the manner in which the civic body is managing its solid waste management project.
It highlighted the absence of a notified policy as well as the shunting of several officers from the post of Additional Commissioner for solid waste management.
According to the report, BBMP was denied Rs 280.17 crore of Central funds (under JNNURM) following a delay in the preparation of a master plan.
“BBMP should have collected solid waste management cess from residents; this task was outsourced to contractors but no money was received. We estimate that Rs 66.6 crore should have been collected or contractors be fined `9 crore. Both were not done between 2008 and 2013,” said D J Bhadra, Principal Accountant General.
He said there were massive irregularities in the civic body’s management of landfills. Five landfills are located on forest land or near water bodies; this is illegal.
“There are no buffer zones in any of the sites. The project engineers who should monitor the sites are paid salaries by the contractors - a dichotomy,” he said.
Maximum Benefit
The audit of the Indira Awaas Yojana, a Rural Development Ministry housing scheme, showed that in 76 cases, beneficiaries owned large houses of their own, but still managed to avail the scheme’s benefits. In 89 cases, the scheme’s funds were used to extend the beneficiary’s house. An IT audit showed that data available with different departments working on the scheme were different. “These figures are only from the villages sampled. The actual figure will be much bigger,” Bhadra said.
In the absence of a permanent waiting list for beneficiaries, 298 ineligible beneficiaries were detected from the areas audited. An amount of Rs 215.81 crore was termed “unfruitful” by the CAG, as sites which were developed after spending Rs 121.38 crore were not distributed to the beneficiaries.
Sitting on Schemes
In the Backward Regions Grant Fund programme, the state government failed to spend Rs 96.49 crore allotted to it in 2008-09 and as a result, lost out on assistance of `108.34 crore the next year. Six districts including Yadgir were covered in the programme.
The Bhagyalakshmi scheme, launched in 2006 to provide financial assistance to BPL families with two girl children, too came in for criticism. While on one side, Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), the funds manager, was forced to reject claims as the government had not paid premium, 6,224 insured beneficiaries were denied benefits in 2006-13 on the clause that the surviving parent should be insured on the demise of his/her spouse. “Action must be taken against the government officials. We asked for details of action taken but were not given them,” Bhadra said.
There was no tracking of the beneficiary children by the implementing department as well, and the agencies didn’t know the whereabouts of 7,814 children covered under the scheme, the report said.
Meanwhile, an audit of Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, launched in 2007 to achieve a growth of four per cent in agriculture, has shown that funds meant to be spent were stored as fixed deposits and diverted to other accounts, leading to a loss of Rs 7 crore in interest.
“This money was not meant to be kept in banks. It must have been spent. Three implementing agencies submitted utilisation certificates of Rs 211.46 crore in 2007-13 in spite of having spent only Rs 137.11 crore. The rest was lying in bank accounts,” Bhadra said. This report will automatically be forwarded to a committee which looks into the functioning of urban local bodies.
MONEY MATTERS
Seventeen vehicles used in Bangalore West for transportation of municipal solid waste were registered as non-transportation vehicles. The list includes four-wheelers, buses and even two-wheelers. The audit showed that a fictitious payment of `88.95 lakh was said to be made for these vehicles in 2008-13. The report also stated that payments to contractors (`453.28 crore) and for additional works (`177 crore) made in this period were cleared without mandatory declarations by service providers, as insisted upon by health and engineering divisions.
