GUWAHATI, Dec 5 � The special team of officers constituted by the office of the Accountant General (AG) for carrying out the special audit of the accounts of the North Cachar Hills Autonomous Council was not provided with vital documents relating to use of crores of Rupees, which affected the audit to a large extent.
The annexure attached with the special audit report gave a detailed account of the relevant documents, which were not made available during the course of the audit and most of the cases where the documents are not available are PWD, Social Welfare, Agriculture, Public Health Engineering and Forest.
As per the documents available with The Assam Tribune, there were objections regarding spending of Rs 8.01 crore by the office of the Executive Engineer (Roads and Bridges) of the PWD, Haflong during the period from 2007-08 to June 12, 2009. But the relevant records like the cash book, register of the funds received, bill register, muster roll records, tenders and quotations, work orders, stock and issue register, supply orders, contractor ledgers, agreements and other vouchers were not available for audit. The department informed that the records were seized by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The photocopy of the seizure report was furnished but most of the pages and completely indistinct and could not be verified, the AG report revealed.
There was objection regarding utilization of Rs 6.61 crore by the Executive Engineer, PWD (Roads and Bridges), Mahur but in this case also, most of the records like the Haflong office were not available except photocopy of a part of the cash book. The office also claimed that the records were seized by the CBI. But the contractor ledger, work abstract, register of works, etc which were not seized by the CBI also could not be furnished by the office during the audit, the report said.
The AG report said that there were objections regarding expenditure of Rs seven crore by the office of the Deputy Director of Social Welfare, Haflong but the cash books, cheque issue register, counterfoil of the cheques, scheme files, approved list of beneficiaries, purchase files, vouchers, utilization certificates etc were not available for audit. The office informed during the audit that the records were seized by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). The NIA later furnished about three thousand pages of photocopies of the records.
Records of the Agriculture Mission were not available as some of those were reportedly seized by the Governor�s secretariat, while, other records could not be made available since the Mission Director�s office is not in existence since September, 2008, the report added.
The report further revealed that there were objections regarding expenditures of more than Rs six crore by the office of the Executive Engineer, Haflong Division of the PHE and most of the records were not available for audit. The office informed the AG team that the records were seized by the NIA. The NIA later furnished some of the photocopies of the documents. However, register of works, contractor ledger, liability clearance register etc, which were not seized by the NIA, could not be produced by the concerned office. Similarly, records of the offices of the Executive Engineers, Maibong and Umrangsho were also not available and some of those records were seized by the NIA.
All the divisions of the Forest Department could not produce the vouchers of Muster roll and the offices claimed that the records were taken by the Manisana Singh Commission.
