Jakhar files complaint with vigilance to book CM, cabinet
Thursday, 21/04/2016
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CHANDIGARH/SAS NAGAR: The Punjab Congress on Wednesday lodged a complaint with the state vigilance department to seek a first-information report (FIR) against chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and his cabinet for `12,000-crore “food-grain scam”.
“The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have concluded in their reports that it is a case of misappropriating central funds and diverting stock,” former state Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Sunil Jakhar has mentioned in the complaint filed at the vigilance department’s Phase8 police station here.
The complaint says that the state procurement agencies — Punjab State Warehousing Corporation, Punjab Agro Food Corporation, Pungrain and Punsup — had provided CAG with the registration numbers of the vehicles that transport food grains; and of the 3,319 trucks that CAG had selected for random checking, it could not trace 3,232, while of the 87 traced, 15 had turned out to be scooters, motorcycles, and cars etc.
He said that of the 16 district offices of the Punjab agencies, seven had not given CAG the vehicle data for the years 2009-10 to 2013-14, while the other offices had released incomplete information about 41,033 vehicles related to 146 grain markets. “Even the RBI has asked banks not to give Punjab any credit for buying food-grain stocks under the MSP (minimum support price) system, as stock worth more than `12,000 crore is missing from the state’s custody,” the complaint mentions.
Besides Badal and his cabinet, the Congress leader has also demanded action against the officials concerned and the heads of the departments involved in the “theft pointed out by two constitutional bodies of India”. The CAG and RBI reports corroborate each other and, prime facie, evidence exists to register a case, he has added.
“The Badal government begins its countdown to the jail yatra from here,” Jakhar told the media after taking along SAS Nagar legislator Balbir Sidhu and party leader Deepinder Dhillon to submit the complaint.
