– Fraudulent withdrawl of Rs. 1.80 crore from grants allocated to Block Samiti Ferozepur
– Additional Deputy Commissioner (Development), Ferozepur, instructed to recover the funds from responsible officers/employees
Chandigarh, March 25:
Punjab’s Rural Development and Panchayats Minister, Tarunpreet Singh Sond, while responding to a question in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha, stated that an FIR has been registered at Police Station Ferozepur City after an departmental investigation revealed the fraudulent withdrawal of Rs. 1,80,87,591 from grants received under the 15th Finance Commission and allocated to Block Samiti Ferozepur. He further informed that the case has been handed over to the Vigilance Department.
While replying to a question raised by MLA Partap Singh Bajwa, Minister Sond stated that FIR No. 434, dated 13.12.2024, has been registered at Police Station Ferozepur City against Kirandeep Kaur BDPO Jaswinder Kaur then Chairperson of Panchayat Samiti Ferozepur, Manjinder Singh (Data Entry Operator, e-Panchayat), Rekha Devi (Data Entry Operator, e-Panchayat), Shubhdeepak Bajaj (Data Entry Operator, e-Panchayat), and Jaspreet Kaur (Zila Parishad Ferozepur, Data Entry Operator, e-Panchayat).
He also informed that the instructions have been given to the concerns to terminate the employees of e-Panchayat society, Manjinder Singh, Data Entry Operator e-Panchayat and Jaspreet Kaur, Zilla Parishad Ferozepur Data Entry Operator e-Panchayat and in addition to this, it has also been instructed to issue a notice to the Additional Deputy Commissioner (Development), Ferozepur. He added that Additional Deputy Commissioner (Development) Ferozepur has also been instructed to recover the funds of Rs. 1,80,87,591 from the responsible officers/employees.
Sond said that In order to prevent such incidents in the future, the matter is under the consideration of the department with the IT team of Panchayati Raj Ministry, Government of India to make security of the website more strict and meanwhile the departmental officials/employees have been asked to be careful.
