Councillors? foreign trip expenses to be probed

THE GWALIOR bench of MP High Court comprising Justice S S Jha and Justice S A Naqvi has, in response to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), issued interim direction for an inquiry of expenditure made by four corporators and Gwalior Municipal Corporation commissioner during a foreign visit between September 15 and September 26, 2003.

THE GWALIOR bench of MP High Court comprising Justice S S Jha and Justice S A Naqvi has, in response to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), issued interim direction for an inquiry of expenditure made by four corporators and Gwalior Municipal Corporation commissioner during a foreign visit between September 15 and September 26, 2003.

HT Image

Further, the court directed the State Government to submit its compliance report within four weeks. The beneficiaries, namely corporators Durgadas Arora, Naresh Gupta, Devendra Singh Tomar, and Sudhir Gupta, and former GMC commissioner Ramesh Kumar, had been on a foreign tour of Europe on GMC expenses.

The earlier Mayor-in-Council (MiC) had resolved and approved the foreign tour expenditure of their proposed visit to Paris, Brussels, the Netherlands and Amsterdam.

Former councillor Brijmohan Singh Parihar, discontented with the MiC’s resolution, moved a writ in the court against the misuse of public money by the GMC councillors and officials. HUDCO’s money earmarked for toilet construction in the City was spent on overseas tour for taking stock of the system there, it was alleged.

The court, in its order, asked that without being sanctioned by the State Government in a matter of expenditure incurred on a visit of councillors and GMC commissioner for a foreign trip, how could the corporation utilise funds for paying of their foreign trip.

It further directed the government to carry out an inquiry in this regard and submit compliance report within four weeks.