Bhubaneswar: Decisions taken by some bureaucrats such as the former Executive Director and CEO of Odisha Rural Development and Marketing Society (ORMAS) and others seem to have offered safe havens to several ineligible and tainted private firms who looted taxpayers’ money allegedly in connivance with these babus.
The audit reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), which were released recently, revealed that several private firms gained undue benefits, thanks to ORMAS officials. In few cases, the Principal Secretary of the Panchayati Raj department too defied norms crafted by the Union government under the Deen Dayal Upadhaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDUGKY).
Massive irregularities were reported in selecting the Project Implementing Agencies (PIAs), private agencies hired by the government for training, placement and other works. In the absence of verification of the background of the agencies, several tainted PIAs obtained lucrative contracts from ORMAS – the key agency involved in the project.
An audit of the contracts given to these PIAs indicated that many of them had fudged data and cheated the government in several ways, produced fake PF and ESI numbers and inflated their earnings to procure government contracts.
In many cases, the ORMAS ED and CEO personally interfered in awarding contacts to some private agencies in open defiance of the established norms. They even helped them get second or third contracts despite not performing as per the provisions and verification agencies like NABARD Consultancy Services Pvt Ltd (NABCOMS) and others submitting adverse reports of fudging data by these PIAs. At times, ORMAS formed additional panels for verification sidelining NABCOMS and others to give clean chit to the erring PIAs against whom NABCOMS brought charges of irregularities.
ASD Education Private Limited, an Indian training arm of an Australian training company is a case in point. Two IAS officers – Principal Secretary of Panchayati Raj and Secretary of Skill Development & Technical Education, in addition to the ED of ORMAS, were invited by the firm to Australia in June 2017. In turn, these officials favoured the firm by placing its proposal before the internal committee in July 2017, exempting them from furnishing the qualitative appraisal.
The Central government’s norms make it mandatory for PIAs to get their ‘qualitative approval’ done prior to placing the proposal before a Project Approval Committee (PAC). While applications of many agencies were rejected on this basis, the application of ASD Education Pvt Ltd was approved by the PAC even without the qualitative appraisal, the CAG report said.
Many such private agencies also got contracts of higher amounts while as per norms they were allowed to be given contracts only up to four times of their annual turnovers based on their categories. In one case, during verification of a PIA named Surya Wires Pvt Ltd in 2018 it was found to lack facilities to open a centre for training.
“Despite such reported deficiencies, the ORMAS ED proposed that Rs 2.90 crore be released to the PIA as the first instalment of the project. The Principal Secretary of Panchayati Raj also gave his nod to the project,” the CAG report said. Later, during inspections, ORMAS found that the centre was not functioning at all.
In another case of cheating, the PIAs claimed that 40 out of the 112 candidates who were claimed to have been placed post-training had salary accounts opened in UCO Bank. When asked by CAG to substantiate the claim, the bank said that six bank accounts were non-existent and no such transaction had taken place in 33 accounts. It was claimed that these candidates were employed by three PIAs who received Rs 27.89 crore from the government.
There are several such cases of gross negligence in scrutiny, compliance of the norms and interference by ORMAS babus in awarding government contracts to ineligible PIAs.
In response, the ORMAS either admitted those charges or claimed to have initiated recovery processes. The CAG in its report demanded fixing responsibility of the gross irregularities and proceedings against the erring officials.
CAG report said that between 2014 and 2019 14 per cent of the trainings and 77 per cent of the placements under the scheme were false and fabricated, hinting at the large-scale irregularities and loss of taxpayers’ money.
Manish Kumar, OP