 | How relief donations are pocketed in India.
By Narendra Kaushik
An excerpt from:
Sunday, 9th January 2005
New Delhi: As an overwhelmed country queues up to donate in cash and
kind for victims of the tsunami, bus operators in Sri Ganganagar, a
border district in Rajasthan, are running away from donation-seekers.
They have every reason to do so.
They still have not tracked down Rs 1,11,000 they collected and
deposited with the District Transport Authority (DTA) for the Prime
Minister's Relief Fund for Kargil martyrs in 1999. Despite local
police and the lokayukta of Rajasthan state having probed the case, to
date only Rs 44,000 has been recovered. The rest of the money is still
lost.
The bus operators, who ran from pillar to post to seek action against
the DTA officials and escape the ‘illegal' recovery, the vindictive
Authority imposed on them, are obviously frustrated. They find the
word relief a misnomer.
"Naturally we feel the pain of the tsunami-affected people. But how do
we trust the relief funds?" asks Pawan Kataria, a bus operator and
local Congress leader. Talking to Sunday Mid Day, Kataria claimed that
he and other bus operators had no interest left in the relief funds.
He anticipated another multi-crore scam in the tsunami relief fund.
Ironically, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's office cannot guarantee
that there will not be a repeat of Ganganagar in the tsunami funds.
The most it can do is to warn people to keep off the ‘illegal'
collection of money done on roadsides, in markets and residential
colonies.
"It is totally illegal to collect money in public places. It is
nothing but begging," said an IAS officer in the PMO, adding that the
Prime Minister's National Relief Fund only accepted money through
cheques.
The officer could not believe that people contributed to the Fund on
roads and public places. He said the PMO received money mostly from
corporates and individuals who wanted tax benefits.
A number of nationalised banks also accept donations directly for the
PM's Fund. All these contributions are exempt from income tax under 80
G of the Income Tax act 1961.
The Prime Minister's office did not answer how it planned to spend the
money, on the grounds that the PM's Fund was a permanent feature and
got replenished off and on.
They claimed that it was a regularly audited account where every
single cheque was issued and drawn from the bank with the approval of
the PM. The banks charge no collection fee even when cheques are drawn
on outstation banks.
But these are the safeguards applicable more to the PMO and in no way
guarantee that there will be no mismanagement and non-utilization of
the donated amount. After all, during collection of the Prime
Minister's National Relief Fund for Kargil martyrs, there were many
reports on non-utilization of the contributions.
Many cheques were left unattended and allowed to become outdated in
the PMO. So much so that M N Das, a Rajya Sabha MP raised the matter
in the Parliament.
Sources who were privy to the PMO room where the cheques were piled,
say that a lot of people availed temporary tax benefits, though their
cheques were not encashed by the PMO. Das, who is now bedridden in
Orissa, recollects that he raised the matter after he got to know that
contributions of certain individuals were not utilized.
Though the tsunami is barely 14 days old, there are already reports of
mismanagement pouring in from different quarters.
Tonnes of utensils, blankets, bed sheets, biscuits, medicines and
clothes have been lying at the Bharatiya Janata Party office because
the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has not agreed to
carry it to the affected areas unless the district administration is
allowed to distribute it. The BJP obviously wants to distribute it on
its own to extract political mileage.
"We have requested the government. It says hand it over to us. We want
it to be distributed through our organisation. It is always better to
distribute relief material through party workers and NGOs," says
general secretary and Lok Sabha MP Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Chouhan also alleged that the government had not facilitated
distribution of relief material by BJP leaders. Alleging
discrimination, he claimed that the government did not provide a
helicopter to Jaswant Singh, leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha,
though it gave one to Mukul Wasnik and Sanjay Singh.
The BJP will raise these issues in an all-party meeting on Sunday. The
meeting has been called to discuss the tsunami and its aftermath.
Chouhan also cautioned the government against the mismanagement of
funds. Ironically, the BJP failed to do just that in Hoshiarpur
district of Punjab where two of its leaders Hansraj Nakra and Satpal
Sarin were arrested for pocketing funds collected for the Kargil
martyrs.
The duo collected 3.28 lakh, but deposited only 1.23 lakh with the PM
Relief Fund.
But why single out BJP leaders? Comptroller and Auditor General of
India, India's watchdog on government money, found irregularities in
the utilisation of government funds during the super cyclone in Orissa
and the earthquake in Gujarat as well.
In Kerala, the Kerala Vyapari Sangh, a body of businessmen belonging
to several districts, broke off after certain members accused the
president of the organisation of bungling funds collected for the
Kargil Martyrs and Gujarat earthquake.
Meanwhile, the prime minister on Saturday announced a package of Rs
150 crore to be released to the Andaman and Nicobar government as
immediate relief for implementing immediate rehabilitation measures.
With this, the total announced by Dr Singh for the tsunami-hit states
has so far touched Rs 700 crore. This includes Rs 250 crore to Tamil
Nadu, Rs 100 crore each to Andhra Pradesh and Kerala and Rs 50 crore
to Pondicherry.
Dr Singh said that a defence team would decide on whether the air base
in Nicobar needed to be shifted because of the tsunami tragedy.
Chautala ghotala
As usual, politicians are the biggest culprits in bungling relief
funds. There are numerous instances of them pocketing money, collected
for the relief. There are number of examples. Haryana Chief Minister
Om Parkash Chautala collected money for his NRI brother in Fiji,
Mahendra Chaudhary after the latter was ousted at gunpoint.
Chautala is yet to hand over the money he collected (Rs 1 from every
person in the state) for Chaudhary under ‘Indo-Fiji Friendship
Society' in August 2000. The Congress alleges he collected Rs five
crore with much of the money having been received in cash. Chautala
promised to hand over the cash to Chaudhary within three days after
his announcement in Bahu Jamalpur, the latter's ancestral village in
Rohtak.
Chaudhary came to India in 2002 to participate in Pravasi Bharatiya
Divas, but Chautala was nowhere to be seen. When Sunday Mid Day asked
him why he did not hand over the money to Chaudhary, Chautala said
that the transfer involved two sovereign countries.
Refuting Congress' claim, Indo-Fiji Friendship Society secretary Sher
Singh Badshami said that only Rs.1.2 crore was collected and it was to
date deposited in a branch of Union Bank of India in Panchkula. Though
Badshami said that Chaudhary was member of the committee, he did not
have either his number or address.
The Bhatinda racket
Surprisingly, while Prime Minister's National Relief Fund is open to
scrutiny by government auditors, state chief ministers face no such
audit of their Relief account. They can spend the money wherever they
feel like spending it. There are also instances when they fail to
account for money withdrawn from the state treasury in the name of
Relief Funds.
Former chief minister of Punjab and currently Deputy CM, Rajendra Kaur
Bhattal, is still facing trial for the Rs 20 lakh she withdrew from
the state treasury in mid 90s. Bhattal withdrew the money for
construction of an indoor hall for boxing in Bhatinda.
Unfortunately for her, she signed on the receipt but forgot to return
the money. Balwant Singh Dhillon, President of Amateur Boxing
Association of Bhatinda, filed a case against her. Dhillon who also
heads an organisation called Judicial Accountability & Human Rights
Protection Organisation, told Sunday Mid Day that Bhattal had made all
kinds of offers to him to withdraw the case.
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