AGARTALA, September 19 (TIWN): The forthcoming festive season, has very little possibility to arouse the theme of joy and prosperity for the Manik Sarkar & Co. Be it the appointment of more than 10,000 school teachers, allotment of medical seats or the recent Rashtriya Madhyamik Siksha Abhiyan (RMSA) fund stealing; the CPI (M) lead left has now been left in a state of scam season instead of festive season. Another fresh scam involving Rs. 17 crore has been made public on Thrusday, at the Congress Bhawan by the Leader of Opposition (LoP) Sudip Barman. While speaking in a press brief here on yesterday at Congress Bhawan the LoP has disclosed a staggering scam of Rs.16.80 crore of Bishalgarh Block Development Office (BDO). Audit observations noticed during conducting special internal audit of the accounts of the BDO of Bishalgar R.D.Block relating to the Financial Year (FY) 2012-13 and 2013-14 audited during 05.05.2014 to 30.06.2014 have identified misappropriation of government money through unauthorized payment to non Job Card holders, doubtful expenditure, non-execution of works, making excess payment, giving undue benefit among other serious irregularities.

According to the Internal Audit Report (IAR), non execution of works under MGNREGA, PDF and TFC; less than allotted generation of mandays and unadjusted IO advance (MGNREGA) alone contributed to a fund involvement of nearly Rs.12.50 crore out of the total corpus of Rs. 17 crore. While terming Chief Minister Manik Sarkar as ‘Mr. Clean’ opposition leader Mr.Barman said: “He did not initiate any action fearing taint in his clean image.” As it was informed in today’s press meet the report was there in the table of the Chief Minster and the same had been lying unattended since last July. “That very fact makes it evident that the Chief Minister himself and his party are involved in the wrong doing and his so called clean image is nothing but a bluff”, remarked Spokesperson of the Congress Dr. Ashok Sinha, while talking exclusively to TIWN correspondent, last evening. Dr. Sinha further asserted that this multi crore fund has been set aside and immorally utilized in the 2013 assembly and 2014 parliament elections. Now, if a document as important as an IAR of a block remains unchecked for nearly 2 months at the table of the most responsible person of the state, the circumstance calls for a rising alarm.

However, with a motive to neutralize the entire episode the concerned BDO Bimal Chakraborty has been moved away from his earlier office to the Information and Cultural Affairs (ICA) department. But who is/are actually behind the embezzlement of public fund and whether the corrupted breed of people will be booked by law or not – these questions still remain unanswered. No wonder, the people of Tripura have , by now, been habituated with these sort of unsolved questions as people in power here do not believe in the old English saying Charity Begins at Home as they have the time to oppose the Israel incursion in Gaza but not sound a word on the China’s infiltration into India. They seem to be more concentrated in world specific issues rather than state’s specific issues.

Corruption at block level in Tripura is nothing new though till date the government has not been able to corner any of the issues. “This is just the scenario of only one block and if investigations are made, more such shocking disclosures will come out”, said Congress media cell’s head Dr.Ashok Sinha, while speaking to TIWN after the press meet yesterday.