SHILLONG, Jan 31: An RTI activist’s claim of unaccounted central funds to tackle COVID-19 pandemic has drawn a rebuttal from Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong who has given an assurance that not a single paisa will remain unaccounted.
Activist Disparsing Rani had earlier said that funds worth Rs 43 crore were unaccounted out of the total Rs 119 crore received by the state as central grants-in-aid through National Health Mission for COVID-19 activities, as per RTI findings.
Maintaining that it is wrong to say that the money is unaccounted for, Tynsong said that the Centre had not released the full amount of the grant-in-aid when Health Minister James PK Sangma had responded to a query in this regard on the floor of the Assembly.
As per him, the Centre does not release the whole instalment earmarked at the same time. The funds are released in a phased manner, the Deputy CM added.
“The whole instalment of Centre’s grant-in-aid was not released when the Health minister had replied in the Assembly. The full amount was released later,” he clarified.
Tynsong suggested that Rani must have compared the figures of his RTI findings and James’ reply in the Assembly. “But I can assure you that not even a single paisa will remain unaccounted since the heads of accounts have to be approved by the AG and it will be reflected in the CAG report which will be tabled in the Assembly during the budget session in March,” he told reporters.
He maintained that there can be no room for misuse of any funds whether it is central or state, since the CAG has kept all records.
Rani had on Monday revealed that the Centre had released an amount of Rs 5.61 crore in Phase I and Rs 104.12 crores in Phase II as per the RTI information received from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
He had recalled the reply of Health Minister James PK Sangma to a question raised by former MLA Adelbert Nongrum, during the last Assembly session, wherein the minister had mentioned that Rs 76 crore was sanctioned by the central government.
“As per the reply of Sangma, Rs 43 crore was unaccounted. This is only proves that there is large scale corruption when it comes to COVID-19 expenditure,” he had said.
