E-Paper
Of ₹35 crore, only ₹1.25 lakh arrears recovered by Chandigarh DC office: Audit
The debt recovery branch didn’t keep detailed records of revenue arrears and failed to report the pendencies to higher authority, says report
Of the ₹35.14 crore to be recovered as land revenue arrears, the deputy commissioner’s (DC) office has retrieved ₹1.25 lakh, states the latest audit report of the director general of audit (DGA), Chandigarh, for 2018-2019.
The DGA had conducted an audit of the DRA (debt recovery agent) branch of the Chandigarh DC office.
Under Section 64 (2) of the Land Revenue Act and Rule 57 (ii) of the Punjab Land Revenue Rules applicable to Chandigarh, authorities are required to affect recovery of district consumer forums, courts of UT Chandigarh as well as courts/consumer forums and collectors of other states and miscellaneous recoveries of other departments as arrear of land revenue by the collector.
“During test check of records of DRA branch for the year 2018-2019, it was noticed that an amount of ₹35.14 crore of 169 cases declared as land revenue was recoverable for 2018-2019. But, only ₹1.25 lakh in two cases was recovered,” states the report.
During the scrutiny, it was also noticed that office did not prepare any reports/returns (quarterly, six monthly and annually) to bring the notice of higher authority to speed up the action of pending recovery.
“Further details/records of amounts recovered as well as pending recoverable amount were not available with the tehsildar (revenue) branch working under the DC office,” states the report.
On this, the department stated that the reports/returns would be made in the future and shown in the next audit. The final outcome will be awaited in audit.
The audit report was procured by city-based RTI activist RK Garg.
“This is a serious issue and such cases of inaction breed both contempt and corruption at the cost of public money. This should be looked into by higher officials,” said Garg.
