DVAC probes village officials for swindling Rs 31L NREGS funds

The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) is probing a case of panchayat officials in a village in Tiruvannamalai siphoning off over Rs 31 lakh MGNREGS fund by creating fake muster rolls for more than eight years.

The accused have been working in Nambedu village panchayat in Pernamallur Panchayat Union in Tiruvannamalai district from 2012 to 2020 in various capacities. The DVAC has listed five persons — M Sundaramurthy, P Rajasekar, P Narayanamurthy, P Prema, and E Santhosh — who worked as panchayat secretaries from 2011, two persons — Rosammal Babu, and P Asha — who were panchayat presidents; and four facilitators — Saraswathy, Senthil, Deivanai and Ammu — as accused in the case.

The DVAC FIR, quoting a complaint from Prabakaran of the same village, said the accused officials made false entries in the nominal muster rolls and other records and swindled money to the tune of Rs 31.21 lakh.

The accused, while executing the works in the village, issued bogus job cards in the name of 17 people who had already migrated from the village and allegedly swindled Rs 8.73 lakh.

They also allegedly misappropriated funds to the tune of Rs 11.72 lakh by including the name of 28 other members in the individual family’s job cards and recorded them as if they worked under the MGNREGS scheme.

They had also swindled funds to the tune of Rs 3.25 lakh for the period from 2012 to 2017 in the village by illegally issuing seven separate job cards under the MGNREGS scheme in the name of husband and wife as separate families and claimed wages for more than 200 days per family against the norms which mandate only 100 days of employment per family in a year.

Money to the tune of Rs 2.95 lakh was also misappropriated from 2012 to 2019 in the village by issuing separate job cards to the members of the same family and giving them work for more than 200 days a year against the norms.

Another allegation is that they swindled money to the tune of Rs 3.91 lakh from April 2012 to October 2020 by illegally including the name of family members of facilitators in six facilitators’ job cards and claimed wages for more than 200 days per family against the norms.

The DVAC said the accused have committed the offences of criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, framed incorrect records, forging of Panchayat Nominal Muster Rolls and used the forged records (Nominal Muster Rolls) as genuine and claimed wages for fake employees under the MGNREGS scheme and thus indulged in criminal misconduct and misappropriated the government money to the tune of Rs 31.21 lakh.