The Imphal Free Press

IMPHAL, Apr 5: Violating all norms and in direct contravention of High Court orders, funds meant to be distributed to loan beneficiaries selected under a scheme of the Manipur Khadi and Village Industries Board, MKVIB, has been hijacked by the board authorities for their own purposes, according to a highly reliable source.

Out of a total of Rs. 3.21 crores meant to distributed as loans to beneficiaries of the CBC loan scheme for 1999-2000, an amount of Rs. 1 crores has been found to be shared out among the MKVIB chairman, ministers, MLAs and staff, according to the source.

A decision to this effect was taken at an unpublicised meeting of the khadi board members, chaired by its chairman, A Aza held on January 23, 2005.

As per documents made available to the media, during the meeting, it was resolved to set aside only Rs. 1.13 crores for the selected loan beneficiaries, while another amount of Rs. 1.08 crores was set aside for what was euphemistically termed as NGOs/clubs.

A sum of Rs. 1 crores was set aside for distribution among the MKVIB chairman, ministers MLAs and khadi board staff. Of this amount, the MKVIB chairman was to get Rs. 50 lakhs, while the remaining Rs. 50 lakhs was to be shared among the chief minister, khadi board members, ministers, and MLAs, secretariat staff of the khadi board chairman, ‘CLO’, ‘FA & CAO’, ‘DOS & ADOS’, other staff, secretary, industries, board director, and director industries.

Not only is this manifestedly illegal, it is also in violation of orders issued by the High Court, the sources pointed out.

It may be noted here that in the year 1997-98, when P Achou was the chairman, a total of 1730 beneficiaries were selected for the loan scheme. However, when Achou was replaced shortly afterwards by L Lala, the latter drew up another list of 1642 beneficiaries for the same scheme.

The two sets of beneficiaries fought out the matter in court, but in September 1999, a compromise was effected between them.

In the meantime, in a related case, under wp(c) 64(04), the Gauhati High Court in an order dated 20/04/01 directed the state government not to disturb the select list of beneficiaries, nor to replace the same by another select list, and not to do anything which may adversely affect the select list.

The same directive was repeated by the Gauhati High Court in its final order dated March 14, 2005, disposing two other cases, wp(c) no. 889 of 2004 and wp(c) no. 322 of 2005.

However, in violation of these clear directives of the High Court, the MKVIB authorities earmarked only one-third of the total funds meant to be distributed among the loan beneficiaries, while the remaining funds are to be shared among unspecified ‘NGOs/clubs,’ and among responsible government figures, the sources pointed out.

 

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