Early Times Report
Jammu, Mar 24: A top PDP leader, who was minister in the previous coalition government, is likely to face action as Governor's administration has appointed Tahir Hussain, Director Finance, Home Department as audit-com-investigating officer for conducting physical and financial audit of construction of community/individual bunkers under security related expenditure (SRE).
It is widely alleged that huge funds allotted by the Centre under SRE has been swindled off by some officers at the behest of a former minister who was at the helm of the affairs.
Hussain was appointed as investigating officer on March 22 to conduct an in-depth investigation and furnish a detailed report to the Finance Department enumerating the reasons behind slow pace of the construction of bunkers in border areas of the State even when Ministry of Home Affairs, government of India, has already sanctioned this project costing Rs 415.75 crores in 2017.
Besides, the officer shall look into the cause of non-reimbursement of Rs 2.176 crores lodged during the financial year 2016-17 for Pilot project for construction of 60 bunkers in Jammu.
Credible sources said that it was all due to adamant attitude of the previous PDP-BJP government that Public Workers Department (PWD) of state government was assigned the job to construct these safety bunkers. Union Government had decided that a central agency will construct these bunkers as safety to people was involved but the then state government of PDP and BJP had taken a stand against allocating this work- worth crores, to any agency of Union Government.
In the month of January 2018, the Centre had sanctioned construction of 14,460 bunkers at cost of Rs 415.73 crore along Line of Control (LoC) and International Border (IB).
While 7,298 bunkers were sanctioned along the LoC in the twin districts of Poonch and Rajouri, construction of 7162 underground bunkers was started along the IB in Jammu, Kathua and Samba districts. |
