Top court ask explanations for Pondicherry tsunami fund expenditure which shows no account of Rs 524 crore alloted

Pondicherry August 9:Following the devastating tsunami in December 2004, Puducherry received around Rs 764 crore from the Central government as financial assistance.

While the Union Territory administration claimed that entire money has been spent on relief and rehabilitation, records obtained under the RTI showed the total expenditure as only Rs 240 crore. What happened to the balance Rs 524 crore?

The Supreme Court on August 8 decided to seek explanations from the Puducherry government and the Centre on utilisation of the Tsunami relief funds, and asked them to adduce the accounts of expenditure.

A bench led by Chief Justice T S Thakur issued notices to the pertinent departments of Puducherry government and the Centre, asking them to respond to a PIL that has alleged corruption in the manner in which the money was spent.

T Murugan, a CPI(M) member, has stated in his PIL that RTI replies received from him over the past two years showed that the total financial assistance received by the Government of Union Territory of Puducherry was Rs 763.981 crores and all the amount has been reportedly spent.

Citing these records, Murugan’s lawyer Nikhil Nayyar submitted before the bench that information received from various departments, however, showed that the actual amount spent accounted only to Rs 239.9 crore.

“This is public money and it must be disclosed what happened to the balance of the funds? In the circumstances when no proper and comprehensive audit has taken place and available records show Rs 524 crore missing from account books, this court has to intervene in public interest,” argued Nayyar.

At this, the bench pointed out that Murugan’s petition was dismissed by the Madras High Court in January 2016 after observing that he was perhaps trying to raise an 11-year-old issue to make it a political battle in view of the impending assembly elections.

Nayyar, however, responded: “The election in the Union Territory got over months ago but I am still here in appeal against the High Court order.

I have no personal interest in this. The High Court ought to have at least asked for a response from the authorities before refusing to hear me. This is my effort over the last three years as I received the information under the RTI and then approached the constitutional court.”

The bench then went through the RTI records and asked Nayyar if these proceedings could bear any fruit since the issue is more than a decade old.

Nayyar pleaded the court to not let the offenders go off the hook only because the alleged siphoning took place 11 years ago since it was a loss to the public money. “The persons directly affected and deprived of the relief are poor fishermen of the coastal community and poorest of the poor in Puducherry.

They are not in a position to directly approach this court and it requires that the matter be taken up in public interest,” he said.

Accepting his appeal, the bench admitted the PIL for hearing and sought replies from the Centre and Puducherry government in four weeks.