Physical, financial audit of border bunkers under SRE
Issue of non-reimbursement of Rs 2.17 cr remains unresolved
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Aug 12: State Government has shelved the plan to conduct much-needed physical and financial audit of thousands of community and individual bunkers in the border areas of Jammu and Kashmir without giving any plausible reason. Moreover, no serious step has been initiated to look into the cause(s) of non-reimbursement of Rs 2.17 crore under Security Related Expenditure (SRE) scheme of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
The physical and financial audit of construction of community and individual bunkers was ordered by Financial Commissioner, Finance Department Dr Arun Kumar Mehta vide Government Order No.231-F of 2019 dated March 22, 2019 keeping in view several important aspects particularly slow pace of work.
Tahir Hussain, Director Finance in the Home Department was appointed as Audit-cum-Investigating Officer with the direction to conduct an in-depth investigation and furnish a detailed report to the Finance Department enumerating the reasons behind the slow pace of the construction of bunkers in the border areas even when Ministry of Home Affairs has already sanctioned the project costing Rs 415.75 crore in the year 2017.
The Audit-cum-Investigating Officer was also asked to look into the cause(s) of non-reimbursement of Rs 2.17 crore lodged during the financial year 2016-17 for the pilot project vis-à-vis construction of 60 bunkers in Jammu, which has been rendered inadmissible by the Ministry of Home Affair’s audit team.
A time-frame of 20 days was fixed for the officer to furnish the report but astonishingly it was not mentioned in the order as to who will assist him in this detailed exercise and due to non-placement of team of officers at his disposal the Audit-cum-Investigating Officer could not initiate even one step towards implementing the order of the Government, official sources told EXCELSIOR.
“The necessity of placing sufficient manpower at the disposal of the Audit-cum-Investigating Officer was projected before the Administrative Secretaries of Finance and Home Departments a number of times but no decision was taken despite the fact that physical and financial audit of large number of bunkers is a daunting task and cannot be looked after single-handedly by any officer of the State administration”, sources said.
They further disclosed, “neither required manpower has so far been given to the Audit-cum-Investigating Officer nor the task has been assigned to any other officer. Moreover, no discussion has taken place on the subject either in the Finance or the Home Department during the past quite long time”.
“All this clearly indicates that Government has shelved the plan to conduct much-needed physical and financial audit of the bunkers in the border areas without any plausible reason”, sources said, adding “if the Government was finding it difficult to spare Director Finance in the Home Department for audit it should have assigned the task to some other officers as there is no dearth of bureaucrats to handle this task”.
They further said, “completely ignoring this vital exercise is not in the interest of the people as allowing slow pace of work on bunkers amounts to depriving inhabitants of border areas of the immediate benefits of the huge financial assistance sanctioned by the Ministry of Home Affairs”.
When contacted, some officers in the Home Department confirmed that no further decision has been taken about physical and financial audit of the bunkers. They, however, admitted that this exercise is required to be conducted to resolve the issues creating impediments in completion of bunkers as expeditiously as possible.
It is pertinent to mention here that Union Ministry of Home Affairs in the year 2017 accorded sanction to the construction of 13029 individual and 1431 community bunkers in Jammu, Samba, Kathua, Rajouri and Poonch districts at a cost of Rs 415.75 crore under Security Related Expenditure (SRE) scheme in order to mitigate the hardships being faced by the people living in the vicinity of International Border (IB) and Line of Control (LoC) due to shelling and firing by the Pakistani rangers.
Besides slow pace of work, in Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts some bunkers either developed cracks within short span of their construction or got filled with underground water thereby rendering them unfit for use by the border dwellers and audit was imperative to point out the lapses and suggest corrective measures.
“Even the issue of non-reimbursement of Rs 2.17 crore lodged during the financial year 2016-17 for pilot project for construction of 60 bunkers in Jammu has remained unresolved as this task was to be looked after by the Director Finance in the Home Department”, sources said and wondered how Government can be so casual on this vital aspect also.
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