Govt engineers used funds for tribals to recharge phones, buy products online, CAG report finds in Odisha

“The junior engineers (JEs)/assistant engineer (AEs) had conducted personal transactions of Rs 148.75 crore from these bank accounts, like withdrawal of cash through ATMs, payments through cheques, payments through POS, insurance premium payments, payments towards mobile phone recharges and UPI transactions. These were indicative of suspected misappropriation of public money by the JEs/AEs concerned,” the audit report said.

Such irrelevant transactions as cash withdrawals, payment of mobile phone bills, transactions on e-commerce platforms, transfer of money to personal accounts or persons not connected with the departmental works are indicative of the fact “that the public money had been suspectedly misappropriated by the JEs/AEs”, the CAG said.

The report also raised doubt on the accuracy of the cost estimates prepared for various works and genuineness of expenditure as surplus funds worth crores lying in these accounts, which received money from ITDAs.

As the ITDAs are under the SC/ST department of the Odisha government, the CAG has asked the department to review all bank transactions done by the JEs and AEs for departmental works across all ITDAs and to fix responsibility on the officials indulged in “suspected misappropriation” of public funds.

The audit body also asked the SC/ST department to issue directions to ITDAs to stop irregular practice of operation of bank accounts by the engineers and to follow the appropriate procedures.

The ITDAs were set up in India during the Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-1979) for integrated socio-economic development of the tribal population residing in the scheduled areas. Odisha, with over 22 percent tribal population, has 22 ITDAs which were set up during the period 1979-80 to 2022-23.

Of these, the CAG has done compliance audits of 11 regarding their activities covering the period from 2018-19 to 2022-23, Subu R, principal accountant general, Odisha, said.

Among other things, the CAG report also flagged poor spending efficiency, suspected payments to contractors, undue favours to vendors, acceptance of suspected fake invoices in passing bills.

When contacted on findings of CAG, a senior government officer said the SC/ST department will review in detail the “suspected transactions” and take appropriate action.