The State government should initiate criminal action against Government servants responsible for the large scale misappropriation of funds in the engineering division of the zilla panchayats and other panchayats, the Joint House Committee on documents tabled before the Legislature, has recommended to the Government.
In its report submitted to Assembly Speaker Krishna on Tuesday, the Committee, headed by legislator Y Nagappa, has said that hundreds of crores of rupees has been misappropriated mainly at ZP engineering division and by secretaries of various gram panchayats. Referring to findings of various audit reports submitted before the Legislature, the Committee has found that no action has been taken in many cases as per the findings of the audit report as well as the reports of the Joint House Committees of the Legislature.
Talking to reporters after submitting the report, Nagappa said the Committee expects the Government to initiate stringent action without any delay as minor action like cut in increment, suspension, transfer are not sufficient.
Transparency measures like creation of website for every zilla panchayat to provide information need to take timely action on audit remarks, are some of the recommendations made by the Committee to improve functioning of the panchayats.
Warning
Meanwhile, Speaker Krishna told reporters that it has come to the notice of the Legislature that in several instances no action has been taken on the findings of various Legislature Committees. He said the executives are duty-bound to take action as per the directions of the Legislature while making it clear that “it (the Legislature) knows how to make the executives act in this regard.” Krishna said, he had already issued direction in the Assembly that action taken report on various reports of Legislature Committees must be submitted in a prescribed period.