The United People’s Party-Liberal (UPPL) on Friday staged a three-hour sit-in-protest at Children’s Park near Kokrajhar Deputy Commissioner office demanding high level inquiry over the alleged financial irregularities in Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC).
Over a hundreds of party members joined the protest from 10 am to 1 pm shouting slogans.
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They also sent memorandums to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal through the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Kokajhar.
The UPPL leaders seek intervention of the Prime minister into the matter and initiate a comprehensive process of inquiry over alleged anomalies detected by CAG in its report.
“The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has done audit of departments of the BTC and unearthed anomalies to the tune of Rs 1.80 crores,” said former Rajya Sabha MP and senior party leader Urkhao Gwra Brahma.
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Brahma said as per the power and function bestowed to CAG by the Constitution “an inclusive audit has been carried out and submitted to the government. It is now the duty of the government to act against all irregularities, anomalies and corruption and give justice to the public”.
The UPPL leader said the CAG report has exposed many aspects of financial mismanagement and corruption in BTC like irregularities in audit system, diversion of funds in several departments, excess expenditures in several works and procurement of goods, undue financial aid to contractors in implementation of schemes, fraudulent payments and doubtful procurements of various materials etc.
It is to be mention that an audit report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has revealed that the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) incurred excess expenditure of Rs 1.47 crore in procurement of biscuits as a morning snack for children of Anganwadi centres in 2013.
The scrutiny of records by the CAG during the audit revealed that the BTC authority violated procurement norms that resulted in excess expenditure of government money.
According to the CAG report of 2016, the joint secretary of BTC’s social welfare department released Rs 3.45 crore for procurement of 4,31,71,300 pieces of Britannia Marie Gold biscuits at 80 paisa per piece from 37 NGOs/self-help groups in October 2013. Independent market survey during the audit in September 2015 revealed that the prevailing MRP of a 300gm packet of Britannia Marie Gold biscuit was Rs 27 and it contained a maximum of 57 biscuits.