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From
Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 43, Dated 27 Oct 2012 |
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| CURRENT AFFAIRS |
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COVER STORY |
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ROT IN THE SYSTEM
Khurshid and the trust deficit
A charitable trust. Some uncharitable allegations. The war of words seems headed for a long legal battle, reports Virendra Nath Bhatt
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In the firing line Salman Khurshid and his wife Louise
Photo: Shailendra Pandey |
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UNION LAW Minister Salman Khurshid is staring at a legal tangle of his own with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Uttar Pradesh Police probing into allegations of misuse of government funds by the Zakir Hussain Memorial Trust, of which Khurshid is the chairman and his wife Louise is the project director.
Between 2009 and 2011, the trust had received Rs 1.31 crore from the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment under the scheme for assistance to disabled persons for purchase/ fitting of aids/appliances.
The saga of troubles for Khurshid began in September 2010 when the Rashtriya Viklang Party (RVP), a political party formed for the cause of disabled persons and registered with the Election Commission, filed an RTI application. Two months later, the RVP filed an appeal with the Central Information Commissioner (CIC). Though the social justice ministry initially refused to furnish any information on the trust, in July 2012, on the direction of the CIC, the RVP was allowed to see the relevant files with the ministry.
“In the files, we found a long list of beneficiaries, but most of the disabled who attended the camps had complained to us about not receiving any equipment,” says RVP President KK Dikshit. “The ministry also informed that the grant to the trust has been suspended following the complaints of irregularities.”
The RVP had filed RTI applications in many districts, including Mainpuri and Farrukhabad, seeking details of the camps and the list of beneficiaries. In July, the Handicap Welfare Department (HWD) provided information about the camps in all 17 districts. “I shared the information with many media organisations, but only the TV Today Group pursued the matter,” says Dikshit.
Even as the Union ministry was battling the RVP in the CIC court, in May 2011 it had requested the UP government to conduct an inquiry into the alleged misuse of funds and also verify the claims made by the trust. In January this year, the HWD directed the district handicap welfare officers (DHWOs) of 17 districts to report on the camps. As many as 14 of the DHWOs claimed they had not signed the documents filed by the trust with the Union ministry and that the signatures were forged.
On 8 September, the TV Today group submitted a written questionnaire to Khurshid, and sent another letter to Louise a month later. The trust ignored both the letters. But on 14 October, the law minister held a press conference at his official residence in New Delhi, where he rubbished the TV Today Group’s exposé of the alleged anomalies and demanded the resignation of Aroon Purie, the chairman of the India Today Group.
At the press meet, Khurshid produced an affidavit signed by JB Singh, the then chief development officer (CDO) of Mainpuri, certifying that a camp was organised in the district. The officer, now posted as the Registrar of Lucknow University, dismissed the affidavit as fake.
“A senior officer like the CDO does not communicate with the government by filing affidavits. Affidavits are filed by a bureaucrat only in a court of law and not in favour of any private organisation,” says HWD Director RB Singh. “The minister’s claim that the trust got the affidavit from the UP government and he is not responsible if the document is fake is also untenable. Along with the affidavit, he should also produce the covering letter under which the affidavit was sent to the trust by the then CDO. Any government office issues a document only after recording the matter in a file. No such record of any affidavit issued by the Mainpuri CDO is available at the office of the Mainpuri DHWO.”
The process of allotment of funds to NGOs by the Union ministry is highly cumbersome and corruption is ingrained in it. The NGO first holds an assessment camp at the tehsil or block headquarters to ascertain the number of disabled persons and the requirement of equipment like tricycles and hearing aids, and then prepares a project report giving details of the funds required. A district-level committee headed by the district magistrate considers the report and sends it to the HWD. Another committee headed by the department’s secretary, which also includes two NGO representatives, scrutinises the report and forwards it after approval to the Union ministry, which releases the funds to the NGO and also informs the district magistrate.
It’s only then that he NGO holds the camp in a particular district and distributes the equipment. The CDO and DHWO are required to certify that the camp was held and the equipment were distributed. When the NGO makes another proposal for a fresh grant, it has to submit a utilisation certificate of the grants received by it earlier, without which the fresh application is not entertained even by the district-level committee.
BETWEEN 12-18 October, the Khurshids filed a multiple defamation suits against Aroon Purie and the India Today Group, claiming damages in crores of rupees. On the same day, the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court issued a notice to Aaj Tak over a PIL filed by social activist Nutun Thakur demanding the lodging of an FIR against the Zakir Hussain Memorial Trust, asking the news channel to provide all the documents on the basis of which it had carried the story.
That there was a problem with the scaling and tonality of the story put out by the news channel cannot be denied. For, just a few days before it aired the “expose”, the India Today Group Chairman had in his letter to Louise accepted that “some persons in the trust or those associated with it are indulging in wrongdoings which you and Salman may not be aware of”. But when the story was aired, it seemed to imply that Salman was directly involved in the siphoning of the funds.
While the case seems headed for a legal battle now, a clear learning from all this is that if you are someone holding a public office, then you cannot be negligent about running a trust with public funds.
Virendra Nath Bhatt is a Special Correspondent with Tehelka.
virendranathbhatt@gmail.com
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