Dear Editor,
In the month of February 2016, Programme Officer ICDS Udhampur was approached for certain information through RTI as numerous complaints were in public domain with regard to fictious (Anganwari Centres (AWC) running in Udhampur District and exaggerated number of beneficiaries in actual running AWC, thus misappropriation of thousand quintals of ration items and fradulant drawl of bills without procuring essential commodities to be served to the AWC.
This scandal was said to be running since long and officers running this scandal were from very senior to lower level officers of the Social Welfare Department (SWD) in league with suppliers. As the allegations were general in nature hence RTI was preferred for genuine information to take the matter for further consideration by “We for You” a social organisation run by Govt. retired senior citizens having experts of all fields.
The Programme Officer ICDS instead of providing the information set his CDPO’s on the job. Using the intelligentsia and to skip from providing the actual information, which would have landed them in trouble, the CDPOs in correspondence informed to deposit a huge sum of Rs 36,500 for the information asked for, with detail as under: 1. CDPO Panchari Rs. 4,500, 2. CDPO Ramnagar Rs. 5,500, 3. CDPO Majalta Rs.5,500, 4. CDPO Chenani Rs. 8,000, 5 CDPO Ghordi Rs. 4000, 6. CDPO Udhampur Rs. 9000′. Knowingly that it is difficult to deposit such a big amount by a senior citizen for the general cause and to deter him from exposing a big nexus of usurping crores of rupees, this escape route was chosen to hide the misdeeds in the department.
Now it becomes more important to put the information in public domain by the department as a transparent policy of the government to know the genuine facts and figures of AWC and number of beneficiaries in each AWC. The glaring facts through the mild information received reveals that, it is one CDPO of Udhampur who is holding the charge of Panchari and Ghordi also and response of depositing the amount from these centers have been signed by the Sr. Asstt. of the respective centers and not by the CDPO also speaks of the seriousness shown towards responding to RTI applications.
This is an open letter and even vigilance is expected to initiate a through probe into the matter if the department does not clarify its real figures for knowledge of common man in leading news papers. The organization “We for you” is at the forefront to expose misappropriations and frauds which will come to its notice through public domain and will follow the same till these attain a logical conclusion with the kind
co-operation of fourth pillar of democracy.
Mahadeep Singh Jamwal
Convenor
“We For You”Organisation,
Udhampur.