Early Times Report
Jammu, Sept 29: On the direction of Divisional Commissioner Jammu, the Deputy Commissioner (DC) Poonch has disclosed the details about Security Related Expenditure (SRE).
As per details available on the Poonch administration's website, as many as 28 individuals have been provided relief by Poonch district administration from 1994 till 2014. The beneficiaries include militancy-affected victims, deaths/injuries due to cross-firing, shelling, and other similar incidents. The relief provided to victims ranges between Rs 75,000 to 4 lakhs.
Notably, the funds under SRE are received by J&K Government from Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) since 1990. From 1990 till March 2015, hundreds of crores have been provided to J&K under Relief and Rehabilitation (RR) and expenditure on police, but the details about the expenditure had been kept a secret until recently.
In January this year, Governor N N Vohra had given direction to all the public authorities to make disclosure of all the SRE. The order was issued by state's Home Department on the direction of Raj Bhavan when J&K state was put under Governor's rule. A New Delhi-based RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak who is associated with Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative had sought details of SRE in J&K from the Home Ministry last year.
The details revealed that more than Rs 500 crore had been spent on SRE under various heads from 2012 onwards. The money was provided to Relief Commissioner Migrants, J&K Police, General Administration Department (GAD), Revenue Department, Divisional Commissioners of Jammu/ Srinagar under various head like relief for Kashmiri migrants including cash assistance, free ration, construction of two-room tenements, ex-gratia relief, cash payment in lieu of appointment in Government service, return and rehabilitation of migrants etc.
As huge money had been pumped into J&K with no accountability, Venkatesh sought the intervention of Governor Vohra. In his letter on January 19, 2015, Venkatesh had urged upon the Governor to direct all the departments in J&K who are associated with disbursing SRE funds to make the details of beneficiaries etc available as mandated under section 4 (1) (b) of J&K RTI Act 2009.
Taking cognizance of Venkatesh's complaint, the Raj Bhavan had directed Principal Secretary Home to make sure the proactive disclosure of SRE is made by all the departments.
The Home department's communication read: "…the Director Finance Home department informed Venkatesh Nayak that all the heads of the departments in J&K have been asked to share the details of SRE…funds for the last three years and also in future upload such details on departmental website".
J&K Police acted on this order only after more than four months and recently the details have been uploaded on JKP's official website. Other departments especially the Relief Commissioner's office continues to violate the orders of the Governor.
"More than Rs 70 crore was provided to Relief Commissioner (Migrants) in 2014 alone but the details of the beneficiaries are still not known to people as the information is not proactively available on the official website of the said organization. This is gross violation not only the orders of the Governor of J&K but also of section 4 (1) (b) of J&K RTI Act 2009," said Mohammad Ramzan Khan, an RTI activist from Budgam.
"We hope other departments will also voluntarily disclose details of SRE, and if this is not done we may be forced to seek judicial intervention," said Dr Mushatq Khan, member of J&K RTI Movement while talking to Early Times. |
