ATI case: Why’s Chief Secretary shooting messenger?
ATI alone received a special grant of Rs 65 crore under the 12th Finance Commission
Mysore: Chief Secretary Kaushik Mukherjee may have dismissed allegations of corruption made by Administrative Training Institute (ATI) Director General, Rashmi Mahesh in her 22-page report, saying the ATI, State Institute of Rural Development (SIRD) and State Institute of Urban Development (SIUD) don't receive big funds, but going by district administration sources, all three institutes together receive an average funding of Rs 29 crore every year from both the Union and state governments.
ATI alone received a special grant of Rs 65 crore under the 12th Finance Commission between 2006 and 2013. While SIRD receives an average of Rs 10 to 15 crore per year, SIUD receives around Rs 2 crore per year, they say.
Ms Rashmi has claimed in her report to Mr Mukherjee that the instances of corruption she has quoted are just the tip of the iceberg and only an independent inquiry and detailed investigation can unearth the real extent of misuse of office and public funds. Giving one instance of alleged violation of the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurement Act, she has charged that former DG, Amita Prasad, arbitrarily chose a Mysore NGO, Bhageerath, to conduct the training programmes of SIRD and SIUD and paid it as much as Rs 1,19,74,007.
She has also charged that the training programmes in ATI, SIRD and SIUD were run on the system of cash advances. Each consultant/faculty was given advances ranging Rs 25,000 to Rs 6 lakh and expenditure was booked on vouchers produced by them. No audit of the vouchers was done. The misappropriation of funds through this is estimated to be at least Rs 5 crore in ATI and higher in SIRD and SIUD, she has claimed.
Ms Rashmi has also alleged that Ms Prasad had several times extended tenders of the Modern Driving School, Travel Next, Galaxy Enterprises, S R Enterprises and Bharani Hospitality Services, which provided various services to the ATI in violation of the KTTP Act. In one single order of 2013-14, 18 different services were extended.a