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| Fiscal year nears end: commissions on clearance of treasury bills escalating | | Desperate people paying without hesitation | | Devender Padha
Jammu | Mar 26
As the ongoing financial year approaching near to its end, officials of government treasuries are busy in making most out of it by charging hefty sum of money as commission for the clearance of pending treasury bills. Fearing lapse of the funds, people are desperate to get their bills cleared before the end of this month and even paying the commission charge at the rate of Rs 250 per lakh without any hesitation in the presence of Vigilance personnel, as per sources.
According to sources, these officials are openly charging commission at the rate of Rs 250 per lakh of rupees and the people are giving away this amount without any hesitation as they are desperate to get their treasury bills cleared before 31st of this month. This period is mostly utilized by officials to clear some of the forged bills as it is the most hectic period. According to an estimate, together the money collected by these officials amounts to several thousands as treasury bills worth several lakhs use to be cleared in a single day.
A month ago, the commission rate was ranging between Rs 100-150 per lakh but, suddenly it jumped to Rs 250 this month due to two different reasons. Firstly, the people are desperate to clear there pending bills before the end of this fiscal otherwise the funds will be lapsed and they have to wait for some more months for clearance. Secondly, the deployment of vigilance personnel at treasuries has further contributed to the hike in commission charges as they also take some part out of it as there fees.
It is to mention that the rush of the people for the clearance of treasury bills usually picks up in the month of March which also happens to be the closing month of each fiscal. The victims of this malpractice include mostly the government contractors and the government departments. At present there are four treasuries functioning in the vicinity of Jammu city. Town Hall Treasury is the Sadar Treasury whereas Shastri Nagar, Talab Tillo, Mubarak Mandi are the additional treasuries.
Meanwhile, some of the government contractors have alleged that their bills were deliberately kept under the pending status by treasury officials for unnecessarily harassing them. And owing to it we used to pay whatever they demand in lieu of the bill clearance, they added. As per sources, State Vigilance Organization used to deploy their personnel in these treasuries to keep check on the alleged irregularities by treasury officials during the last month of each fiscal but mostly it has been observed that they also used to share part of this illegally earned money, sources added.
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