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| After detecting fraud, Financial Commissioner joined hands with supplier: VOK report | | Digitization of Land Records | | Early Times Report
Srinagar, Mar 28: The probe conducted by the Vigilance Organization Kashmir into the digitization of the land records, carried out by the firm owned by a son of a separatist in 1997, had pulled up the then Financial Commissioner (FC) for not handing over the case to VOK even after detecting that software provided by the firm was not upto the mark.
The VOK report states that despite writing a strong note against the software company (owned by a son of a separatist) the then Financial Commissioner, the administrative officer held a meeting with the representatives of the firm on Dec 12, 1997 and decided to install the Urdu database in tehsils across Jammu and Kashmir at a cost of Rs 25000/ at each tehsil in contravention with of the terms and conditions laid down in the first agreement. "In the said meeting it was decided that Rs 5.20 lakhs already paid to the computer company on account of the cost of software shall be treated as advance and be adjusted against the future installing of the software," the VOK report states. "Following the meeting a second agreement was drafted with the supplier. And the firm was provided a second chance to install the software only at 21 tehsils. This motivated agreement facilitated the misappropriation of the cost of the software to be installed at remaining 38 tehsils. In this way the accused public servants manipulated a way to benefit the software company by making adjustments of money which they had taken in advance," the report reveals.
"This is not only astonishing but is astounding too. The Financial Commissioner had laid down on the file all the ingredients which were sufficient to black list the firm and recover the government money along with interest advanced to it earlier and prosecute it for hoodwinking and defrauding the public exchequer. The Financial Commissioner decides this emphatically mentioning that software supplied by the firm is nonfunctional too," the report states.
It states that since the software was available within and outside the country therefore the normal procedure of tendering would have generated rate competition to benefit the state. "But this was neglected willfully and deliberately for deriving he pecuniary gains," the report states adding that "At one hand they admit that the state ex-chequer is being put to loss by this party (software company) but on the other hand more contracts were bestowed upon the firm for the reasons which are explicitly clear and well understandable."
The report states: "Being knowledgeable of the substandard supply of the software the Financial Commissioner should have gone for the national and global tenders in the inte est of the state and should not have opted for the same software at the cost of the state ex-chequer."
The report states: "Not agreeing but assuming for the argument sake that the Financial Commissioner was not in a position to effect the immediate recovery of the money advanced to the firm therefore the arrangement for utilizing the payment in advance was made in the interest of the state but this is not true as agreement executed on December 24, 1997 was executed for the amount of Rs 4.572 lakhs and it was still with the Financial Commissioner but it was disbursed to the software company on account of installing the software in tehsils of Budgam and Udhampur districts."
"As a matter of fact Financial Commissioner had mentioned in her own note date December 3, 1997 that the payment on account of the networking be not cleared to the company but it was paid to them on January 27, 1998 in addition to the adjustment of the advance payment made with respect to the software. Had the public servants acted faithfully there would have been no need to execute the second agreement with the supplier," the report states.
It may be recalled that Early Times in its ongoing series about the computerization of land records has reported that son of a separatist had bagged the project worth Rs 2 crore to digitize the land records in mid-nineties.
"The Revenue officials without inviting any global tenders had given the contract to the company of the son of the separatist. All the norms were flouted to appease the separatist," sources said.
After the scam came to fore the then J&K government ordered a Vigilance probe into the matter. "Soon after GoI came to know that the son of the separatist, close to Pakistan, had compiled the land records, questions were raised. The biggest question was from where did he acquire the software? And why did the Revenue department handpick the son of the separatist for the project?"
They said, "The Hurriyat lobby at that point of time was so strong that it got the probe scuttled and the questions which were raised at that point of time are still unanswered. But many people believe that land records of entire J&K are in possession of Pakistan and the software used for the compilation of these records was pirated from the neighbouring country as the records were compiled in Urdu language."
"There is no doubt about the fact that PDP has prevailed over BJP vis-à-vis Article 370 and Article 35-A and has ensured that these burning issues are not fiddled with. The groups which have challenged the Article 35-A in the Supreme Court do enjoy the backing of RSS but the fact is that these groups are not a part of the government." |
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