Badal’s kitchen cabinet cornered grants

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 26

The kitchen cabinet of former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal tried to corner most of the funds available under various schemes for rural development works and used them largely in their own constituencies.

Inquiries made by the Congress government in Punjab revealed that most of the funds had been utilised in Lambi, Jalalabad, Bathinda, Rampura Phul, Jalandhar and Mansa – represented by the former Chief Minister, his son and Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal and his wife Harsimrat Kaur Badal (Member of Parliament from Bathinda) former Rural Development Minister Sikandar Singh Maluka, Virsa Singh Valtoha (in Khemkaran), among others.

The report that was submitted by the Director, Rural Development, to Minister Tripat Rajinder Singh Bajwa today, showed that in the past five years, the Akalis spent Rs 17,165 crore in the villages of Bathinda only, while Rs 14,598 crore was spent between 2012-2017 in Fazilka (Sukhbir’s Jalalabad constituency is in the district). As many as 70 panchayats of Muktsar got over Rs 1 crore each in grants. Bathinda district had 27 villages where more than Rs 1 crore each was spent and Mansa had 10 villages where more than Rs 1 crore each was spent on civic works. In Rampura Phul (then represented by Maluka), seven panchayats got over Rs 1 crore each as grants for civic works.

After receiving the report, the minister has ordered the audit of all civic works done in these villages immediately. The minister was also peeved that the third party audit (TPA), which should have been done thrice, was not ordered. The first audit is done after 40 per cent grant is released, second after 30 per cent is released and third after the last tranche of 30 per cent is released.

The Tribune had reported last week that the government was contemplating audit of quality of the works done from top engineering colleges. The minister today ordered Giani Zail Singh College of Engineering, Bathinda; Shaheed Bhagat Singh State Technical Campus, Ferozepur; University College of Engineering, Patiala; Guru Nanak Dev University, Regional Campus, Sathiala and Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar, to conduct the TPA of all 60,666 works ordered by the previous Akali BJP government in over 13,000 villages across the state. They have been asked to check if the material used for the laying of roads, water supply, sewerage and sewerage treatment plants was according to specifications when the works were ordered under the Rural Urban Mission.

While 33,929 works have already been completed, 22,000 works are under process. Around 4,000 works were yet to be started. The cost of the projects awarded by the Akali-BJP government was Rs 2,355 crore, and Rs 2,129 crore had already been spent/disbursed to the panchayati raj institutions or other project executing agencies.