The additional district magistrate Pauri Ramjee Sharan Sharma has submitted to the district magistrate Sushil Kumar the inquiry report on the seven- point complaint made by Vinod Sachdev, who is the member of the Pauri municipal council by courtesy of being a representative of the member of Parliament from Garhwal, against the alleged irregularities indulged in by the local body president.
The ADM is learnt to have mentioned in his report that he had probed all the seven points mentioned in the complaint and found that the statement of the executive officer, Pauri municipal council regarding the collection of parking fee for three years was false.
The inquiry report is supposed to have mentioned that the receipts of the municipal council showed collection of parking fees by the civic body in contradiction of the statement given by the executive officer.
Notably, the complaint ran that the parking fees were illegally collected from the under- construction bus station in Pauri for over three years by the municipal council. However, the executive officer of the municipal council had rejected the charge and affirmed that though tender of the parking was published on September 18 2017 no parking fee had been collected for the past three years from the bus station.
The ADM in his report showed evidences while citing receipt no 41770 and 47921 dated February 9 2016 and March 4 2016 of Rs 500 being collected every month from each of the owners of the four wheelers parked there as parking charge. However, the money thus collected had not been deposited in the government account, the inquiry report submitted by the ADM purportedly said. Earlier, the president of Pauri Vyapar Sabha had met the Garhwal commissioner, complained about illegal collection of parking fees and submitted the receipts in support of the charge, which negated the statement of the civic body’s executive officer on the matter.
Vinod Sachdev had alleged that the unauthorized collection of parking fees and non-deposit of the collected funds in the government account amounted to embezzlement of public funds and asked the district administration to register a case against the civic body president.
Sachdev had further said that he had not received any official information despite being a member of the civic body about the meeting of the municipality board held on September 11 2017.
As per the complainant, all the members were supposed to receive such information in black and white. However, after the allegation had been made forged documents had been sent, the complainant had alleged.