There was more trouble for the Mamata Banerjee Government with the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday directing the petitioners to make Bengal Finance Secretary party in a PIL case related to massive financial irregularities in utilization of central funds.
Hearing a Public Interest Litigation filed by State BJP leaderJagannath Chattopadhyay the Division Bench of Chief Justice PrakashSrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj directed the petitioner to include the name of the senior IAS officer as a party in the case.
Chattopadhyay had earlier filed a PIL in which he alleged massive irregularities in utilization of central funds. In his PIL he had relied on the Comptroller and Auditor General reports according to which the State Government has failed to account for `2.29 lakh crore of central funds.
No proper certificate towards the whopping expenditure had been submitted the petitioner alleged prompting the Court to direct the inclusion of the top officer’s name as a party to the case. The CAG report was placed in March 2021.
According to Chattopadhyay most irregularities were reported in Panchayat and Rural Development (around `82,000 crore), UrbanDevelopment and Municipal Affairs, Eductation (`36,000 crore) andHealth. The petitioner also claimed that the irregularities had takenplace in schemes related to rural housing, 100-days’ work, SC-ST-OBC funds, sanitization etc. The next date of hearing has been fixed onJanuary 30.
“Out of these departments at least two are directly under the Chief Minister and some others are held by some of her senior most ministerial colleagues … this is apart from the Education in which the then minister is presently in jail,” Sanmoy Banerjee a State BJP leader said.
According to Banerjee the corruption took place in the form of fund misutilisation on account of tours undertaken by the Chief Minister.
“There are instances where it was seen that the funds for mid-day meal was diverted to meet the expenses of Chief Ministerial tours in company with the senior officers … how will they explain such fund diversions … hence no report or half-baked reports were furnished prompting the CAG to act,” the BJP leader said.
The TMC leadership have however rejected the development as “nothing but a ploy to pursue a vendetta politics of the Centre. Said TMC leader Rahul Bose “they have failed to defeat Mamata Banerjee politically … so they are now trying to take these dirty means.”