Tags:
Journalism of Courage
When the Government realised that 50 lakh tonnes of grain was ‘‘missing’’ from the FCI godowns in Chandigarh, they did two things — order an inquiry and send a senior regional director on repatriation. Now it seems that it was an accounting error, though a formal inquiry report is still awaited.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Singh said: ‘‘There is no physical loss of grains, it is just that a section of the FCI used the old formulae to calculate the figures when a new mode of disbursal of grains had come in.’’ He claimed had sent the revised figures to the ministry the same morning that he was given his repatriation letter. He had not signed the papers that gave these figures.
While the FCI is maintaining that it is an accounting error, the ministry took it as a corruption case. A joint secretary in the ministry wrote to the FCI chairman to take immediate action in view of the large quantities of stock involved.
According to official sources, the minister was ‘‘upset’’ as officers at different level were giving conflicting versions.
According to FCI officials, the grain in question also does not belong to the FCI but to five state government bodies and the FCI was only acting as the nodal agency by reporting the figures to the ministry.
From this year, state government agencies like Markfed and Punjab State Warehousing corporation have been given permission to send their grains directly to other states instead of routing it through the FCI. When the figures were sent to the ministry at the beginning of the month, these figures of 40 lakh MT was not were not reflected in the figures.
Ministry officials are not ruling out a scam: ‘‘We do not rule out a major scam, quantities are missing for what was being shown as available in records.”
