Yet another scam in the Food and Civil Supplies department was exposed with the question raised by Congress legislator Jaivardhan Singh in the State assembly on Tuesday.
The department received Point of Sale (POS) machines on rent for fair price shops incurring loss of Rs 10 crore to the government. This was informed by Minister of Food and Civil Supplies Om Prakash Dhurve in reply to a starred question asked by MlA from Raghogarh constituency Jaivardhan Singh.
Singh demanded a high-level enquiry of the scam in which rampant organized corruption within the government would be revealed and those involved in these corruption scam should be exposed.
The scam surfaced after it was found that the payment for rent was paid Rs 10 crore higher than the cost of the procurement of the POS machines.
The cost of POS machine is Rs 2999 while the machines have been taken on rent at Rs 1191.30 per month from DSK Digital Technologies and at Rs 1245 per month from linkwell Telly Systems Pvt ltd.
In his reply Dhurve provided that all the 22403 fair price shops have been provided with POS machines.
The Congress legislator told media persons If these POS machines would have been procured for all the 22403 fair price shops across the state the cost of procurement would be Rs 6.71 crore while the cost of hiring the machine on rent till September 2016 is Rs 16.94 crore which has been paid to the companies which have provided the machines on rent. This indicates that the companies have colluded with the officials and worked for their invested interest.