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EDITORIAL One really fails to understand how the militants succeed in entering the high security zone of Corp Headquarters and kill 7 personnel including a Major. It is true that PROs normally are unarmed. So are many other offices located inside the high security headquarter zone. But that does not mean Corp Headquarters...more Students of various colleges have been agitating for removal of several grievances that have affected their academic life adversely. The main problem is discarding ....more |
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EDITORIAL One really fails to understand how the militants succeed in entering the high security zone of Corp Headquarters and kill 7 personnel including a Major. It is true that PROs normally are unarmed. So are many other offices located inside the high security headquarter zone. But that does not mean Corp Headquarters should remain porous for the terrorists to inflict such damage. Not only the intruders fired all types of weapons, they had definite support from outside localities in terms of rifle fired grenades landing in the security zone. This proves that militants, call them mercenaries or indigenous, continue to have the capacity to hit vital targets with reckless ease. It also shows that not only several localities around Badami Bagh cantonment provide sanctuaries to the militants but also there are enough of weapons of the type usually used in regular wars. There are other localities as well having similar hideouts from which militants have dared throw rifle-fired grenades on the civil secretariat twice last month. It clearly manifests various lapses even when messages from across the border continue to give indication of acceleration in insurgency. The ongoing Lashkar-e-Toiba annual conference in Lahore together with other Pak-based militant outfits have vowed to liberate Kashmir and give fresh impetus to the ongoing Jehad (holy war). Incidentally, the latest attack and the resultant loss of life and property in the Corp Headquarters area is owned by Lashkar-e-Toiba. Army Dictator Gen Musharaff has also bucked up the Jehadis and promised full support to the ongoing Jehad. This necessitates impregnable defence of the Corp Headquarters, including attacks from suicide squads. As regards the ramifications of the latest attack by militants on the high security Army area, it is certain that the enemy do hog international limelight to show that J&K is on the boil. This may not be however their immediate purpose for the latest attack. It appears that it was a sort of response to the press conference wherein Corp Commander had claimed many successes in neutralising militants. No wonder the very same headquarters become the target in the evening to indicate emphatically that insurgents have the last word as regards initiative and the last laugh as regards claims by the security forces. In one go they succeed in negating the impact of the press conference. The second fallout which cannot be erased from the minds of the people is the fear psychosis generated by such attacks. The people begin to feel when security forces cannot defend themselves, they won't like to endanger their lives by refusing to obey militants' edicts. If terrorists can target civil secretariat and makes the civil administration a laughing stock, the humiliation and awkwardness is no less for the valiant soldiers when the highest security zone is successfully intruded by the militants causing immense damage. The third aspect relates to the impact on bureaucracy and the State police. The message is loud and clear for them and that is that terrorists continue to call the shots and police would be well advised not to challenge them. One indeed should have become wiser after the Kargil conflict and attacks on civil secretariat particularly when clear threats have been given by Pak rulers and the militant outfits supported by them. In the above context one tends to refer to Lt Gen Krishen Pal's statement that lack of proper synergisation of various security agencies have led to acceleration in militancy during the post Kargil period. With the reversion of control to Army for all counter-insurgency operations, such synergisation should have been total by now. As has been repeatedly mentioned in these columns, unless rate of elimination of ultras is more than rate of infiltration, normalcy shall ever remain elusive. The figures indicate that as on now more infiltrators have entered the State than claimed eliminated or nabbed. This has got to be reversed to neutralise the enemy convincingly and deny them regrouping through intensive counter-insurgency operations. As the winter tightens its grip in valley and other regions in Jammu which are militancy infested, it is time that security is made pilfer-proof in the region under the jurisdiction of 16 Corp particularly when offices are slated to re-open in the winter Capital from November 8. There could be hard-core suicide squads including human-bombers striking at random on vital civil and military targets. People would like to see all initiatives snatched from militants with pre-emptive strikes through total synergisation of various security agencies engaged in counter-insurgency operations. The State, the nation and the armed forces can ill-afford any recurrence of such enemy forays into Corp Headquarters, civil secretariat or any other battalion/brigade/police headquarters. Students of various colleges have been agitating for removal of several grievances that have affected their academic life adversely. The main problem is discarding of supplementary exam system. The students are greatly agitated over it while University authorities express their helplessness in considering this demand. They contend that Academic Council has approved this which is the highest policy making body of the University. If that be so, the matter can be referred back to AC for appropriate orders. At least assurance to that effect should be forthcoming from Vice Chancellor which would diffuse the situation. The second demand does not fall within the purview of the University as regards heavy power curtailments and disruptions which have affected studies of the students and life of the citizens adversely. But surely University authorities can approach the administration to mitigate hardships caused thus so that their academics do not get affected materially. There are other demands like improvement of infrastructure in Colleges. Surely, this is an area that can be addressed constructively by the University. Improvement of infrastructure is the liability of the University and it should see to it that necessary infrastructurals are improved to improve the standards. These include labs, libraries, buildings, toilets, general hygiene, proper staffing etc. Hostel accommodation and lack of facilities there is another burning issue that continues to agitate students. One expects that this aspect can be taken due care of. As regards the enquiry asked by students regarding collapse of examinations system in Jammu University, all that is needed must be done to put the system back on the rails and remove all deficiencies thereof. Ultimately, peaceful environs are a must for healthy academics. There ought not to be any rigidity. The situation needs to be diffused immediately lest the agitation should take violent turn and disturb peace and tranquility of the city. There is no problem that cannot be resolved given the necessary goodwill and mutual accommodation. |
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learning, super-specialisations, and the rest Health, education, public works, agriculture, animal husbandry, irrigation, works meant for the upliftment of tribals, of scheduled castes, industry, police -- there literally isn't single sphere of state activity which has escaped the culture of loot in Bihar. Nor does a level in the hierarchy seemed to have foregone the opportunity. The telling summary which the Comptroller and Auditor General has released of his report on Bihar continues. **** Road construction and maintenance: Bitumen valued at Rs. 93.96 lakh was misappropriated by Assistant/Junior engineers of NH Division, Mohania and R C Division No. 1, Muzaffarpur.... No responsibility was fixed by the Road Construction Department for shortage of material valued at Rs. 70.91 lakh in 3 RC Divisions .... Road rollers valued at Rs. 1.33 crore were purchased in violation of LoC system.... Chief Engineer, Road Construction (Mechanical), Bihar, Patna purchased huge quantity of spare parts of road rollers worth Rs. 12.16 crore without any requirement. A centre for higher learning: 87 per cent of the total expenditure of the Magadh University was spent on salaries of the staff and those of constituent colleges.... Rupees 2.36 crore were paid as interest during 1991-92 to 1996-97 on overdrafts.... Principals of various colleges and Magadh University staff did not adjust or refund advance of Rs. 3.35 crore and Rs. 81.17 lakh paid out of examination fund and University fund respectively for nearly 10 years. No action was taken to recover these amounts....390 staff (including 283 class IV staff) were working in excess of sanctioned strength putting extra unauthorized burden of Rs. 2.65 crore on basic pay alone during 1991-97....Higher pay scales were unauthorisedly allowed by University beyond the recommended scales as per fifth pay commission to staff resulting in avoidable financial burden of Rs. 69.41 lakh during 1991-97... Loss of Rs. 8.52 lakh was sustained in purchase of paper due to allowing higher rate and lack of proper pursuance... Publication of results of examinations was delayed by 56 to 234 days. Magadh University started Post Graduate courses in several subjects of express orders of the Government to the contrary ... An affiliated college took advantage of extension of the cut off date for take over as a constituent college and appointed 190 teaching and non-teaching staff, though was hardly any students. Thus, the college had one lecturer per 2.24 student. An institution for providing super-specialised health service: The Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences was established in 1984 with the objective to develop an apex centre for delivery of super specialised health and medical care of highest standard... Accounts of the IGIMS for the years 1991-98 were not prepared as of July 1998 and even initial account records were not maintained. Maintenance of cash books was seriously deficient.... Three counter clerks misappropriated hospital receipts of Rs. 5.93 lakh. Different officials credited hosptial receipts of Rs. 27.44 lakh to IGIMS fund after delay of 3 to 300 days indicating temporary misappropriation. Overdue advances against suppliers and officials aggregated Rs. 4.63 crore..... Due to inadequate availability of faculty members, the IGIMS failed to provide intended health care. Unauthorized operation of posts, excess payment to doctors on deputation, illegal/unauthorised appointment and excess payment of pay and allowances to non-technical staff, as noticed in test-check, involved expenditure of Rs. 1.43 crore... Average occupancy of beds varied between 11 and 31 per cent during 1995-98 and Haematology and Microbiology Departments failed to provide necessary diagnostic services due to lack of medical kits required ... Failure to avail of competitive rate in purchase of a machinery (Cobalt - 780 c) resulted in extra expenditure of Rs. 24.96 lakh. Machinery and equipped valued at Rs. 44.39 lakh remined uninstalled machinery and equipment valued at Rs. 2.80 crore were installed after delay of 7 months to over 10 years, equipment valued at Rs. 82.84 lakh was non-functional... Penal clause of contract for recovery of Rs. 1.22 crore from contractor of civil work was not invoked. IGIMS made avoidable and unjustified payment of Rs. 1.05 crore towards price escalation for the work done beyond contract period. Besides, level of escalation was injudiciously increased from Rs. 0.70 crore to Rs. 2.32 crore. Cost of excess issues of material for Rs. 48.08 lakh, ovedue "mobilization advance" for Rs. 0.65 crore, inadmissible payment of advance for Rs. 53.00 lakh and overdue secured advance for Rs. 44.17 lakh remained unrecovered from contractor. Absence of planning and co-ordination in various components of works resulted in extra liability of Rs. 44,77 lakh on electrification works. Other Universities: Annual accounts were in arrears for 13 years in Mithila University, Darbhanga, 5 years in Patna University, 4 years in Ranchi University, and 1 to 3 years in rest of the 9 Universities as cash books and other basic records and subsidiary accounts relating to examination fund, scholarship fund, development fund and accounts of the constituent units were not compiled... In 3 Universities cost involved in excess manpower aggregated Rs. 2.35 crore. In test-check excess payment due to wrong fixation of pay to staff for Rs. 64.67 lakh was noticed... Five teachers who were elected/nominated as Members of Parliament (MP) were paid salaries from the University funds during tenure of their membership of the Parliament in contravention of the University Act. Protecting forests: The Divisional officers did not prepare proforma accounts with balance sheet which were to be sent to Accountant General. The Secretary, Forest and the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest failed to ensure the accountability for the expenditure incurred by the Divisional Officers. As a result, fraud and serious irregularities like defalcation, pilferage, etc., committed by the Divisional Officer were detected only during audit of transactions in these divisions... Conservator of Forests allowed increased use of private operators at avoidable extra cost of Rs. 1.50 crore in 5 divisions alone. This would make the system vulnerable to malpractice and pilferage of wood and other forest produce... Divisional Forest Officers, STD, Latehar-II defalcated Rs. 52.20 lakh through fake purchase of spare parts during 1992-94. He also defalcated sale proceeds of Rs. 6.33 lakh during 1992-93. Besides, a Range Officer defalcated sale proceeds of Rs. 1.48 lakh. No responsibility was fixed for the defalcations etc... Chief Conservator of Forest (ST) made unjustified excessive purchase of ASCU (wood preservative chemical) resulting in loss of Rs. 51.05 lakh. Further, cost of ASCU and labour charges for Rs. 8.54 lakh were not recovered from purchases of timber, though required. The matter was not investigated by the Department.... Chief Conservator of Forest (ST) unauthorisedly reduced the price of mining timber causing loss of Rs. 2.46 crore to the Government during 1992-97... Industrial bamboo was unauthorisedly sold to tender basis instead of auction. Failure to fix reserve price resulted in very low price in 1993-97. Compared to the price in 1992-93, the price in 1993-97 was lower by Rs. 1.60 crore. The price fetched was also very low compared to price fetched in neighbouring states. The state's enterprises: As on 31 March 1998 there were 50 Government Companies (including 19 Subsidiary Companies) with total investment of Rs. 1901.23 crore. Of these Companies only 17 were in operation and 33 were either defunct or under liquidation... The Accounts of all the 50 companies were in arrears from two to 21 years. As a result the Companies failed to ensure their accountability to the Legislature under the provisions of Companies Act. 1956. The Government and Legislature were also deprived of knowledge about the result of investment of Rs. 1901.23 crore in these Companies... Five Companies had not finalized their Accounts since inception. Of the remaining 45 Companies, on the basis of latest finalized accounts, 43 Companies had incurred accumulated loss of Rs. 417.25 crore and 2 companies earned accumulated profit of Rs. 3.53 crore. According to the latest finalised accounts, the accumulated loss of 237.56 crore in 15 Companies had for exceeded their paid up capital of Rs. 81.52 crore... During 1997-98, the total capital employed of 45 Companies was Rs. 831.21 crore and return thereon was Rs. (-)14.25 crore which was negative...Violating Section 285 of the Companies Act 1956, Board meeting were not held during 1997-98 in 14 companies whereas in another 14 Companies requried (four) meetings were not held.... As per available information in case of 22 Companies salaries and wages were coutstanding for a period ranging between one month to nearly five years. This liability amounted to Rs. 205.83 crore.... Six Companies had invested Rs. 522.46 lakh in equity shares of 53 units on which no dividend had been received. Textbooks for the young: The Bihar State Text Book Publishing Corporation was incorporated as a wholly owned State Government Company in April 1965 and as a sole publisher to text books to provide text books at cheaper rates... Activities of the company for the last five years ended March 1997 were reviewed... Accounts of the company were finalized up to the year 1989-90 only... Due to loss of Rs. 462.20 lakh during the year 1996-97 (Provisional), the net worth of the company became negative and paid up capital was eroded by 88.2 per cent... Due to higher cost of forma of books compared to outside press, the company incured extra cost of Rs. 20 crore on printing of books in its own press... Compared to income the company's press of Rs. 2.39 crore, the expenditure during last five years up to March 1997 was Rs. 8.99 crore ... Per centage of breakdowns ranged between 50.5 to 66.9 per cent which resulted in payment of idle wages of Rs. 4.30 crore.... Though the capacity of the press was heavily under utilized due to breakdowns, company paid overtime amounting to Rs. 68.80 lakh... No norms of wastage of printing paper were fixed by the company. However, based on norms fixed from private printers, the company incurred extra cost of Rs. 2.17 crore on account of excessive wastage of paper... Modernization of press proposed in 1989 was still awaiting approval by State Government.... Company could sell the printed books ranging from 65.5 to 81.4 per cent only. As result books ranging betweeen Rs. 2.75 to 6.28 crore remained unsold and inflow of cash of Rs. 26.27 crore was delayed.... Electricity for all: The Bihar Electricity board had liability of Rs. 718.49 crore towards purchase of power from others....Due to procurement of material without immediate requirement, the Board's funds of Rs. 11.28 crore were locked up with a consequential loss of interest of Rs. 2.48 crore... Due to non-assessment of proper requirement, construction of line was lying incomplete and expenditure of Rs. 1.06 crore remained locked up... Material valued at Rs. 3.40 crore were lying unutilised for one to more than five years with consequential loss of interest of Rs. 2.24 crore... As against envisaged completion scheduled of 3 to 9 months, 13 substations involving material valued at Rs. 1.89 crore had not been completed even after lapse of 28 to 18 months. As a result the material utilized remained unproductive... 8 sub-stations, which were energised during April 1969 to March 1996 to a cost of Rs. 2.44 crore, could not be utilized due to theft of material. As such, for want of Rs. 0.57 crore the sub-stations were non-functional denying the intended benefit to consumers... 15 transformers failed after a run of one to 216 months as against their life expectancy of 300 months. The Board did not investigate the reasons for premature failure of transformers... Due to unplanned construction works, Board's investment of Rs. 25.17 crore was locked up and the intended benefit of the schemes could be achieved.... Due to insufficient safety and precautions, transformer oil valued at Rs. 0.23 crore was lost.... Net shortage of Rs. 2.09 crore remained unreconciled/unrecovered during 1992-93 to 1997-98 ....Salary and wage of Rs. 4.25 crore were paid to 152 employees without work during the period from September 1991 to August 1998 ... Board incurred fixed cost of Rs. 2.01 crore on Pole factories during last five ending March 1996 whereas the income earned was only 0.18 crore .....Due to non-commissioning of above equipment Board's fund of Rs. 7.31 crore was locked up for over years with consequential loss of interest of Rs. 1.32 crore per annum and the Board could not operate any of the units.... The sorry tale continues from activity to activity. Thus, even on so basic function of the State as Collection of revenue, a summary of the official summary indicates: Cross - verification of just 3 dealers in just 3 commercial circles reveals under-recording of turnover by Rs. 38 crore, consequential underassessment of tax: Rs. 12 crore... Cross verification in 5 district mining offices reveals non-levy of sales tax of Rs. 20 crore... Verification in just 1 revenue anchal discloses that by letting lessees continue after expiry of lease without renewing it, functionaries deprived the state of revenue of Rs. 164 crore... Verification in 6 revenue anchals establishes that by allowing encroachment Government land, and not even collecting rent on it, functionaries inflicted a loss of Rs. 40 crore... Test verification of 99 dealers in 33 commercial circles discloses concealment of goods from other states worth Rs. 65 crore, and thereby loss of revenue totaling Rs. 232 crore... Check of 3 dealers in 8 circles reveals that they purchased goods worth Rs. 43 crore on "stolen/invalid/fake declaration forms" and thereby evaded tax amounting to Rs. 17 crore... Non-collection of purchase tax from 20 sugar factories, revenue loss in 1996-97, Rs. 2.8 crore, Non-collection of water rates in 2 Divisions, revenue loss Rs. 2.8 crore ..... 9 circles, suppression of sales turnover, revenue loss Rs. 2.2 crore .... Sublease by lessee, revenue loss Rs. 5.8 crore.... Irregular use of land, revenue loss Rs. 130 crore... **** And these are just a few items from just the summary of the Report. The Report consists of three volumes... Civil, Commercial, Revenue Receipts. The first volume itself contains 367 tightly packed pages..... Yet, a messiah of the poor. And if you donot agree, you are a communalist-fascist-high caste -reactionary... |
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