Monday, May 24, 2010

Audit leaves PM, Sonia red-faced - Reveals Financial Impropriety By Nehru Museum

New Delhi: What could embarrass the PM Manmohan Singh,also culture minister, a special audit has found that 5 crore released for special publication of works on Jawaharlal Nehru and C Rajgopalachari was illegally diverted to a trust headed by Sonia Gandhi and PM and Karan Singh as trustees. The 43 page report points out a series of financial impropriety committed by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. The special audit done by the Controller General of Accounts shows that NMML transferred Rs 5 crore in two tranches to Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund which has Suman Dubey as the secretary. Karan Singh is also chairman of NMML executive council. JNMF is a private trust. Citing culture ministrys sanction of Rs 5 crore to NMML, the audit report says, Part 12 of this sanction stipulates that no part of this grant should be diverted to any institution. But in this case, entire grant has been released by NMML to JNMF which is another irregularity by NMML.

Instead of utilising the fund,audit report says, JNMF invested it in fixed deposit for a period ranging from 91 days to two years. When JNMF has i nvested most of these amount in fixed deposit of two years, it is simply not possible to utilise it within a stipulated period, thus violating the condition of sanction, audit report says. Pointing out that for reasons best known to NMML for three years 2006-09 it did not grant any fellowship.

Audit report is scathing about Rs 20 crore modernisation project. It points out that payments have been made to two persons (Jaimala Iyer and Chandana Iyer) repeatedly for doing same work which defies logic and amounts to gross misutilisation of plan fund specially those relating to modernisation of museum. It has also been found that nothing concrete has happened in the modernisation project so far despite Rs 20 crore given in 2007.
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(source-toi)

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