West Bengal's Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari writes to Finance Minister Sitharaman

KOLKATA: In a letter to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Suvendu Adhikari, Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, accused the state government of diverting Central funds under different development projects.

In the letter, dated September 29 and dispatched on Friday, Adhikari alleged that before the introduction of the public finance management system, the state government had remitted all Central funds to the wage and means head of the consolidated fund.

"The transactions of that particular head have to be thoroughly enquired into. The enquiry must be conducted through officers, who are not likely to be influenced by the state government officials," reads the letter, a copy of which is available with IANS.

Adhikari also alleged that the state government opened its state nodal account of public finance management with ICICI Bank, ignoring West Bengal Finance Secretary Manoj Pant's preference for a public sector bank on this count.

The main irregularities alleged by the Leader of Opposition include withdrawal of a major portion of the funds received under different Central sponsored schemes and depositing the same in the state emergency relief fund and spending the money along with the accrued interest in other purposes.

He also mentioned that the state government is delaying the sub-allocation of funds to different departments which is even of six months.

"As a result, accounting of schemes gets jeopardised and subsequently utilization certificates cannot be generated on time. Whereas the calculation gets erroneous because it has been tampered with in the first place, due to intentional delayed deposit.

"So, the whole 'hue and cry' that the Central Government doesn't pay in time is totally false and a politically motivated narrative, uttered time and again to reap benefits," Adhikari further writes in the letter. (IANS)

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