SHILLONG, March 13: Four KHADC officers of the Forest department were suspended by the Council in March 2017 on charges of short deposit/misappropriation of forest royalty amounting to Rs 3.70 lakh, a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) for the year ending March 31, 2013, has revealed.
The report was tabled in the recently conducted budget session of the Council.
According to the report, the Secretary of the Council was directed to draw disciplinary proceeding against all the four officers in the case.
The audit observed that the Council, in violation of Rule 13 (1) of the United Khasi Jaintia Hills District Fund Rules, 1952, failed to inform the case of short deposit/misappropriation to the AG (Audit), Meghalaya, immediately after the incidence of misappropriation.
“In response to the request of the AG (Audit), Meghalaya, seeking records relating to the misappropriation case in November 2017, the Secretary of the Executive Committee in December 2017 expressed his inability to furnish the same since the said records were under the custody of the Additional Judge with the ongoing inquiry of the case,” the CAG report stated.
In reply, the Council Secretary stated that the departmental inquiry revealed short deposit of royalty of Rs 5.30 lakh during 2012-2013.
It was further stated that based on the order of the Executive Committee of KHADC (May 2018), the Chief Forest Officer was demoted and the amount was being recovered from his salary while three suspended officers have been exonerated. “However, since records were not made available to audit, the actual amount of short deposit of forest receipts against Rs 38.30 lakh as mentioned in the initial inquiry and recovery there against could not be ascertained during the audit,” the report said.
While the grounds on which the three suspended officers were exonerated were taken up with the Secretary, the latter, however, did not provide any information on the plea as the matter was sub judice.
Non-deduction of VAT from contractors’ bills
Meanwhile, in another observation, the CAG pointed out that that while settling the bills of the contractors against the various works executed during 2012-2013, the Secretary of the Council did not deduct VAT amounting to Rs 18.94 lakh from the final payment of Rs 1.87 crore made to as many as 88 contractors.
“Failure to the deduct the VAT amounting to Rs 18.94 lakh from the bills of the contractors resulted in violation of the codal provision besides loss of the revenue to the State and extension of undue favour to the contractors,” the CAG report stated.
In the reply, in May 2018, the Secretary stated that none of the above contractors was registered with the sales tax authority, and as such, VAT was not deducted from them.
The audit, however, observed that the reply was not acceptable since Section 106 of the Meghalaya VAT Act makes it mandatory for every DDO to deduct the VAT component at source and credit the same to the government account while releasing payment to contractors, even as it added that this situation calls for fixing responsibility of the DDO(s).
“Council may initiate appropriate action to recover VAT from the contractors,” the CAG further observed.