Principal Correspondent
KOHIMA, JULY 30
STATE Institute of Rural Development (SIRD), Nagaland diverted Rs 83 lakh from the Backward Region Grant Fund (BRGF) for other purposes contrary to the provisions of scheme guidelines.
BRGF, a Centrally Sponsored Scheme implemented by Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India (GoI), is designed to redress regional imbalance in development.
The objective of the scheme was to provide financial resources for supplementing and converging existing developmental inflows into the identified districts of Mon, Tuensang, Longleng, Kiphire an Wokha in Nagaland so as to bridge critical gaps in local infrastructure and other development requirements that are not being adequately met through existing inflows and to strengthen Panchayati and Municipality level governance with more appropriate capacity building, to facilitate participatory planning, decision making, implementation and monitoring, to reflect local felt needs, etc.
According the Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) of India report for the year ending 31st March 2013, which was tabled in the just concluded Budget session of Nagaland Assembly, SIRD Nagaland received Rs 14.70 crore during October 2008 to February 2012 from Centre for capacity building of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in the above five districts of Nagaland under BRGF.
Scrutiny of records (August 2012) of the Directorate of SIRD revealed that out of Rs 14.70 crore received, an amount of Rs 83 lakh meant for capacity building programme in the five districts were diverted by the Directorate for other activities such as expenses for State level Village Development Board’s and Communitisation Conference (Rs 50 lakh) conducted at Ganesh Nagar, Dimapur (30th November to 1st December 2009) and purchase of five vehicles at Rs 33 lakh.
When pointed out, the Director in reply stated (April 2013) that Rs 50 lakh was given to the organising committee for VDBs conference as per the verbal instructions of the higher authority. However, the name of the higher authority was not communicated.
Regarding purchase of vehicles, the Director stated that the department purchased vehicles from the scheme funds for transportation of faculty members as the BRGF districts were located far and wide having remote locality and no fund was provided by the State government and the Ministry of Rural Development for many years though approached by the department.
It is evident from the reply that the department irregularity utilised Rs 50 lakh for VDBs conference in violation of the scheme guidelines. Department’s reply that the vehicles were utilised for transportation of the faculty members are also not acceptable as the guidelines do not provide for purchase of vehicles and the vehicles were used by the officers stationed at Kohima for attending the office and not for training purposes as claimed.
Thus, the department irregularly diverted Rs 83 lakh for unauthorised purposes leading to non-fulfillment of the intended objective of capacity building of PRIs. The matter was reported to the government (June 2013), reply had not been received (January 2014).
