Chennai: Action sought against persons who misappropriated SC/ST public funds

Chennai: An advocate has approached the Madras high court to direct authorities to take appropriate action against the persons who have misappropriated the public funds which has been allotted for the welfare and education of Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribes students. A division bench comprising Justices M.Sathyanarayanan and P.Rajamanickam before whom the public interest litigation filed by advocate K.Karthikeyan came up for hearing, ordered notice to the principal secretary, department of Adi-Dravidar and welfare, after government pleader (in-charge) sought time to get instructions.The bench posted to December 10, further hearing of the case.

According to petitioner, the SC/ST people were being classified as downtrodden for several years. Various schemes were formulated for them by the successive governments. Several crore of Rupees were spent by the government towards stipend, educational equipments, hostel  facilities, cloths, books, etc for them. While so, the scholarship and other fees, which reach the students after passing through various departments and educational institutions, have been swindled by the officials, he added.

He said after repeated complaints, the state government has appointed an auditing team to scrutinize the amount spent by the government for the welfare and education of the SC and ST Students. The report submitted by the chief internal auditor and chief auditor of statutory body reveals very huge misappropriation public money by various authorities including educational institutions, which have handled the grants given by the state meant to enhance the educational status of the SC and ST students.  

The audit report narrated two types of misappropriation of public money, viz., the absolute misappropriation of public fund and misappropriation unable to be calculated absolutely, but approximately calculated. Under the first head ' 17 crore has been misappropriated.  The misappropriationunder the second head also runs to several crores. Therefore, it was necessary to initiate a full-fledged enquiry into the misappropriation of funds in order to trace the public fund and recover the swindled amount from the law breakers at the earliest, he added.