ROURKELA: Birmitrapur MLA Shankar Oram has urged Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Girish Chandra Murmu to conduct an audit of District Mineral Foundation (DMF) expenditure in Sundargarh district.
Shankar had written a letter to Murmu in this regard on November 12 last year. Since, there has been no response from the CAG yet, the legislator said he would personally meet the CAG and provide details of corruption, violations of norms, diversion and misuse of DMF funds in non-deserving areas and projects.
In the letter, Shankar, who is also the DMF trustee, sought an audit into allocations, approvals and expenditure on DMF projects undertaken in the district. He claimed despite being a legislator and a DMF committee member, he was kept in the dark over approval of projects and allocations.
The MLA said, to his knowledge, for many years expenditure has been incurred from the DMF for projects originally declared by the state government to be implemented with its own funding. Such diversion of funds were done without approval of the DMF committee.
“The district collectors (past and present) when asked are either responding or displaying sign boards on the DMF project sites. It seems there is an unholy nexus between some officials and local politicians to misuse funds violating procedural approvals,” Shankar stated in the letter. He said the maximum irregularities occurred between July 2019 and May 2022.
Apart from Shankar, Sundargarh MP Jual Oram, MLA Kusum Tete, Rajgangpur MLA CS Rajen Ekka, Bonai MLA Laxman Munda, Hemgir and Koida block chairpersons, one zilla parishad member and two sarpanchs are in the board of trustees of DMF.The Sundargarh collector is the ex officio chairman and managing trustee of the DMF, while heads of line departments are the ex officio members of the trust board.
Tete said in 2021 she had written to the then collector to provide details of expenditure carried out from DMF, Odisha Mineral Bearing Areas Development Corporation (OMBADC) and state government funds. Stating she is still waiting for a response, the legislator said she would also urge the CAG for an audit into spending and allocations under the fund.
Meanwhile, against total DMF collection of Rs 5,368.19 crore till November, 2022, Rs 7,568.63 crore has been sanctioned for completed, ongoing and upcoming projects in the district.