Over the period of 3 years former senior officer of Society for Promotion of Information Technology in Chandigarh (SPIC) withdrew salary of 26.84 Lakh without proper sanctions
During the audit of salary expenditure of Society for Promotion of Information Technology in Chandigarh (SPIC) conducted from 2007 to 2022 by local audit department of Chandigarh Administration it has been pointed out that Senior UT officer Anil Kumar Prashar who was also heading the society has illegitimately drawn salary and allowance from the society’s fund.
The societies formed under Chandigarh Administration do not take participation in the auditing of their funds. However, under the directions of then Director (Information Technology) Mr. Rupesh Kumar a special audit of the salary expenditure took place during which the salary expenditure of the society from 2007-2022 was audited.
Under the department of IT, SPIC operates and implements different plans to promote the IT industry in the city. The audit has revealed that Anil Kumar Prashar had been drawing pay and allowance from the society’s capacity building funds.
Under head “Irregular withdrawal of funds from Capacity Building Fund – Pay and Allowance to Anil Prashar”, the audit found out that an amount of Rs 26,48,700 has been withdrawn by Mr. Anil Prashar from August 2015 till September 2018 as salary component, which is illegal according to the guidelines of National e-Governance Division (NeGD)-Corporate SeMTs.
In June 2015, the Chandigarh Administration’s Director of IT directed Anil Prashar, the Centre Manager of SPIC, to take on additional responsibility to head state e-governance mission team (SeMT) until further notice. The amount of Rs 26.48 lakhs included arrears and additional salary as Head of the society SeMT.
Audit stated in its report that this raise in salary and arrears are not mentioned anywhere when Prashar was stated as head SeMT in August 2015, The staff of Capacity Building Programme including Head SeMT are appointed/deputed only by the Government of India, and no approval from Government of India in this regard shown to audit..
Not just this, the audit also mentioned an allowance for conveyance of Rs 7,382 per month on 31.03.2018 even though he was using an official vehicle for the same purpose and as per rules the person who is provided with an official vehicle is not eligible for conveyance allowance.
The audit also revealed that during the same period few other employees of SPIC were also paid while same has been marked as absent as per reports. An amount of Rs 63,23,033 has been paid for the days when attendance has not been marked by employees and Rs 14,10,117 (Fourteen Lakh Ten Thousand One Hundred Seventeen Only) has been paid for leave in excess to one leave per month”.
The audit also mentioned that during the course of the audit, the employees had to mark their attendance on registers and no leaves were marked as well. There was no proper structure to keep track of the attendance, hence a full salary was paid to even those employees who were not present.
The Audit also specified “copy of office orders regarding duty of employees during Covid period has not been made available to Audit as Attendance from April 2020 to July 2020 has not been marked by SPIC employees (except two who had marked in July 2020). The leave record has not been maintained. The leave record has been maintained on loose sheets, that too not as per required format. The Authority competent to sanction the leave has also not been informed. Rules/policy framed regarding carry forwarding of leave are not provided by SPIC. The procedure adopted towards carrying forward excess availed leave is fundamentally wrong”.
Even the salary of the employees is also found to be higher as per the audit report. Anil Kumar Prashar who came as the main culprit behind this fraud was hired with a salary of Rs 22,000 when hired which was found to be Rs 2.85 lakh in February 2022 same is true for other employees as well.
Sumit Sihag, director (IT) on Friday, said, “In fact, Prashar’s services were discontinued in September 2022 and during that discontinuation, a recovery of the said amount of Rs 26 lakh was also imposed on him as per the said irregularity mentioned. Then, a committee was also constituted to further relook into the matter and the committee is yet to give its final decision.”
