BHOPAL: A massive scam, running into crores of rupees, has been detected by the state’s accountant general in Take Home Ration (THR) scheme in Madhya Pradesh.
The scheme aims at providing nutritional requirements to children aged between six months and three years, pregnant, lactating mothers and out-of-school adolescent girls aged between 11 and 14 years.
A 36-page report of the Madhya Pradesh Accountant General, which has been accessed by this newspaper, mentions massive fraud and irregularities in the execution of the key scheme, spanning from the identification of beneficiaries to production, and from distribution to quality control of the food samples.
The state’s accountant general has found the fraud at multiple levels and recommended the MP government to get the issues probed by an independent agency.
As per the report, the baseline survey for identifying out-of-school adolescent girls (OOSAGs) for the THR distribution wasn’t completed by the state women and child development (WCD) department till February 2021, despite central and state governments’ instructions to complete the survey by April 2018.
The school education department, during 2018-2019, had estimated the number of OOSAGs at 9,000, but WCD estimated the number at 36.08 lakh without conducting any identification survey. Knowing well that the figures were inflated, the WCD directorate adopted the figure of OOSAGs at 5.5 lakh.
Audit verification revealed that at 49 Anganwari centers in eight districts, just three OOSAGs were actually registered, while the MIS portal of the WCD department showed 63,748 registered OOSAGs and claimed THR distribution to 29,104 OOSAGs during 2018-2021.
This clearly indicates the extent of data manipulation in OOSAGs estimation, ultimately leading to the fake distribution of THR worth Rs 110.83 crore.
One of the most startling irregularities were found in the transportation of the THR from the production plants. Six THR manufacturing plants located in different parts of the state, claimed to have transported 1125.64 MTs of THR costing Rs 6.94 crores.
But the verification of the Vahan database of respective states revealed that those trucks (which were claimed to have been used for THR transportation) were actually registered as motorcycles, cars, autos and tankers or the trucks didn’t exist at all in the database, meaning the THR was transported in ghost trucks.