GUWAHATI, March 29 - With the chances of opacity always very high when there are cash transactions made by heads of government divisions through cheques made to �self� or when cash is withdrawn from the State Treasury on a �self� basis, the Assam Election Watch has decided to monitor if there are any illegal transactions of government funds at the time of Assam Assembly elections.
The RTI findings of such transactions made last year have prompted the Assam Election Watch to keep a track on such transactions made this year.
It needs to be mentioned that the Assam Election Watch undertook an exercise to monitor such cash transactions for a two-month period starting from March 1, 2015 to April 30, 2015 and came up with startling findings. These findings have encouraged the body to undertake the initiative for current period (March 1, 2016 to April 30, 2016).
The Assam Election Watch had filed an RTI application with the Directorate of Accounts and Treasuries in regards to the amount of cash released from the sub-treasuries of Assam just for a period of two months last year.
�We sought information on the details of cash withdrawn or cheques issued for �self� by heads of various government departments. The directorate eventually forwarded this application to 60 sub-treasuries of Assam to respond,� informed Tasaduk Ariful Hussain, state coordinator, Assam Election Watch.
Hussain said that the possibility of cash withdrawn from the government treasuries through �self� cheques ending up in the hands of politicians for election campaign is very high.
�It is important to note that only 18 sub-treasuries responded to the RTI application while responses from 42 sub-treasuries are still awaited. A total of four sub-treasuries have declared release of funds in self cheques and drawn within the period of March 1, 2015 to April 30, 2015. The total amount of fund released by these four treasuries is more than Rs 800 lakh (Rs 8,31,42,840) which was withdrawn through 307 numbers of �self cheques�,� informed Hussain.
As per the findings of RTI, the highest amount drawn in self-cheque so far is found to be more than Rs 1 crore (Rs 1,03,05,069). This was drawn by the Tangla Irrigation Department on March 31, 2015 vide cheque No. 66216. The second highest amount of cash of Rs 50 lakh (Rs 50,32,305) was also drawn by the same department in self cheque on March 18, 2015 vide cheque No. 65834.
�The sub-treasuries have declared that no government order is issued which allows any government official to withdraw cash from the treasuries on the basis of �self� cheques amounting to more than Rs 10 lakh. There are also no government order received by any sub-treasury office during the last ten years from the Finance Department or other concerned department with regard to the maximum limit of the amount an executive engineer or other executives can withdraw from the treasuries on the �self� cheques,� said Hussain, adding that it will be important to observe the withdrawal of self cheque in this financial year end as there are chances of misappropriation of government funds for the electoral malpractices.