Technical Assistant submit false bill, cost govt Rs 1.38 lakh under the name of new panchayat bhavan

Mukesh Solanki

Jagdalpur, Feb 17: The corruption continues unabated in Jagdalpur janpad. On one side when janpad is busy is achieving new milestone of development, it is surprising that there are some who are fraudulently withdrawing government money in the name of some or other government schemes. A live example of this is observed at Jagdalpurjanpad village panchayat Gumalbada.
As per information received, to withdraw the fund of  Gumalbada village panchayat, fraudulent bills through online system has been submitted and bill through which amount was withdrawn have also been submitted in online mode. Technical Assistant Rahul Ranjan by preparing a false bill withdrew the funds actually sent for development works.
If sources are to be believed, this is not a single case but such fraud took place in other panchayats too. Rahul Ranjan Sahu paid a bill of Rs 138000 to M/s R S Traders against the construction of Gumalwada panchayat building, whereas the construction of this building had started in 2015 and was completed in one year. At that time Technical Assistant was Ashish Dewangan and was completed during his tenure anf he came from time to time to inspect its construction.
Now this false bill has been passed by Rahul Ranjan Sahu for the building which had alreday been completed about six years back. He got involved in this corruption as this panchayat in 40 km from Jagdalpur and out of which passes through dense forest. One need to cross this forest to reach this panchayat and Rahul took advant age of its remote location.
This correspondent himself visited this panchayat to verify the facts. When he reached there after crossing this dense forest, sarpanch and 10 panchs were anxiously waiting for his arrival.
How corruption took place
Now the present srapanch is female, her name is Jhitri Baghel. Her husband Mahangu Baghel said, panchayat was constructed in 2015 during the tenure of former sarpanch Baliram Nag. He further said, few months back one investigation team came, then it was known that on April 11, 2020 an amount of Rs 138000 bill was paid to R S Traders for the construction of panchayat building. Then the present sarpanch called panchayat secreatry Dasrath Goyal and latter confirmed that neither this amount was credited to panchayat account and neither any construction took place. Now the panchayat is united against this corruption and will soon meet collector to lodge a complain demanding probe and action against those at fault.
In this entire case secretary Dasrath Goyal said, he was aware about this corruption when Chitlagur panchayat secretary informed about it.
What officials say
When this correspondent contacted Jagdalpur Janpad’s PO in this connection he was asked to contact APO Pawan Singh. APO Singh said, probe has already started and Technical Assistant Rahul Ranjan Sahu, Assistant Programmer and Programme Officer are found to be involved in this case. Rs 1.38 lakh amount has been called back from vendor’s account to Janpad’s acount. Now the question arises that without any proposal from the panchayat, the payment of this big amount was made in a systematic manner and the vendor was made payment without making any supply of material. Now the administration is shying from taking any action against the vendor.
10 months after the amount was paid to the vendor, responsible administrative authorities have still not completed the probe and culprits are left scot free.