JOIN USThe practice of government officials submitting fake and inflated bills to fraudulently avail Leave Travel Concession (LTC) has come to light, following which the Central Vigilance Commission has directed the CBI to probe the issue.
Though there is no immediate estimate of the fake claims, officials said it could run into lakhs as over 400 LTC claims will be investigated.
The CBI has received the reference from CVC on Wednesday and they have started examining the matter, a CBI spokesperson said.
The fraud came to light during a probe by Air India’s vigilance wing, which became alert following the arrest of a man in Kolkata airport allegedly with 600 blank boarding passes of the airline.
According to sources, government officials have produced fake Air India tickets and boarding passes and claimed the money under LTC. Purchase of seven “Executive Class” tickets for travel on the Delhi-Kolkata-Port Blair route and back on December 13 last year will specifically be probed by the CBI, sources added.
The Rajya Sabha Secretariat had asked the airline to conduct an inquiry into this case after it received LTC claims from seven officers.
The AI vigilance wing found that the serial numbers of the seven boarding passes did not match the ones in its inventory. The seven people also claimed Rs 1,35,610 as ticket fare, which is way above the cost of tickets in the sector.
The scale of the fraud was learnt when LTC claims made by employees of various ministries and government departments were reviewed following the fraud.
One of the Ministries is likely to ask the CBI to investigate the LTC claims made by scores of employees in one of its PSUs, sources said.
Investigators believe that the blank boarding passes could have been used by unauthorised agents to generate fake travel records for government employees eligible for LTC facility extended by the central government. The agents said to have connived with the passengers to book a ticket in AI flight, cancel it subsequently and get ticket from another airline for the same destination.
They would then generate fake boarding passes to be provided for LTC claim.