The unearthing of a growing number of PLA irregularities has forced the ruling CPI(M) to launch personal attacks on the state's principal auditor general.

By Udayan Namboodiri

Inspection reports from the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) are minor irritants for most state governments. For the Marxists in Calcutta, however, they have assumed a dimension that promises much political embarrassment. "What next?" is a question that greatly worries Jyoti Basu's economic wizard, the Massachusetts-trained Finance Minister Ashim Dasgupta. The state is to have panchayat elections next year and if the annual report of the CAG, expected to be tabled in the state Assembly in the budget session, turns out to be an expose on the working of the state Government, the ruling Left Front could be in trouble.

Last week, the Calcutta branch of the CAG came out with another inspection report that discloses how district magistrates (DMS) of six districts each transferred approximately Rs 40 crore of plan funds to personal ledger accounts (PLAS) in contravention of principles of parliamentary and legislative control over public finances. Coming, as it does, as a part of the series of damaging documents from an office once considered a pushover, the state's Finance Department is understandably concerned.

The report peels yet another layer off the facade of Dasgupta's professions of propriety. There are now numerous examples of public money being misappropriated after the finance minister issued an order in 1991 directing district officials to deposit public funds into PLAS without seeking the CAG's sanction. The rule about opening and closing a pla is quite explicit: the account must be of a temporary nature and has to be reconciled at the end of the year. The monies transferred into it have to be categorised under distinct heads and used only for those purposes, supported by vouchers and bills. Every rule was broken in West Bengal.

The CAG report reveals how the DMS of Nadia and North 24 Parganas siphoned off plan funds to furnish their official bungalows. No supporting documents were tendered. Another dm bought plane tickets for a local MLA. In one of the districts, says the report, a zilla parishad chairman embezzled over Rs 1 crore of Zilla Saksharata Samiti funds by getting the district disbursement officers (ddos) to withdraw funds from the PLAS and deposit them with a body called the "State Resource Centre" that he had floated. In another place, even the petrol bills of middle and senior district officials were paid out of PLAS. Since none of the ddos attached to the concerned treasuries bothered to maintain records of the sums they withdrew for depositing into PLAS, it is almost impossible to know how much money went where. "We realise we are dealing with an extremely scientific system of siphoning," says an official of the CAG.

The amount involved in the scandal is yet to be verified, though the Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee has charged the Government with irregularities totalling Rs 2,600 crore. In August, Banerjee filed a petition in the Calcutta High Court demanding a cbi investigation into the financial muddle. While a division bench of the court ruled out an inquiry, it directed the state Government to file its findings before the court. The case will come up for hearing later this month.

The evidence against the state Government is mounting. A report compiled under the supervision of Principal Auditor General (PAG) Jyotirmoy Mondol in August pointed out that with Dasgupta as the finance minister, the state spent just 42 per cent of Central welfare scheme funds compared to 78 per cent under his predecessor, Ashok Mitra, now a CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member. Dasgupta probably allowed Rs 1,250 crore to "disappear" through the pla route. The minister says he was helpless since the funds always arrived late. But the CAG's office had nailed the lie in its earlier report, "Wanton opening of PLAS", which said: "The state could have easily explained to the Centre its inability to use the funds. An unspent amount would have gone on to increase the cash balance of the state Government held with the Reserve Bank and could have been used in the subsequent year by appropriate increase in the budget allocation in the next year for that particular scheme with the full knowledge of the state legislature."

The scope thus left for corruption was easily exploited. But the skeletons are rapidly surfacing to haunt the Government. On the defensive, the Marxists have resorted to mud-slinging. Apparently, CPI(M) apparatchiks have dug up the fact that Mondol has a wife from a child marriage contracted in 1950 and are using the information to embarrass him. Though the PAG claims to have divorced Gouribala Mondol (nee Pramanick) in 1964, the woman and a son by that marriage, Karunamoy, were produced in court in August by a group of CPI(M) leaders from Mondol's native Mathurapur region. A case of criminal negligence was started against the PAG and the group has threatened to sue him for bigamy too.

The mother and son, who claim to live in dire poverty in Lake Town, were, however, reticent about disclosing where they got the funds to file a lawsuit against Mondol. Inquiries revealed that the duo were being guided by N.P. Goswami, a lawyer. It is believed that Goswami harbours an old personal enmity against the PAG and is probably being used to harass Mondol by a group of CPI(M) leaders. One of them, Sachindranath Bor, a former CPI(M) zonal committee chief, is out on bail after being sued for pla irregularities by the dm of South 24 Parganas. Another of the men involved is Nikunja Paik, CPI(M) MLA of Mandir Bazar constituency, who has filed an fir against Mondol for attempt to "murder" his estranged wife and son on October 16. However, Mondol is believed to have been in Chennai that day.

Earlier, when the scam broke, Dasgupta said that managing finance through PLAS gave his ministry some flexibility. Newspapers considered friendly to the Government carried exhaustive reports on how funds spent via PLAS avoided red tape. It was also argued that all states took recourse to such systems in case of emergencies like floods or earthquakes. But in West Bengal, the CAG has almost ascertained that even pension funds, fishery funds and drawings from the Consolidated Fund found their way to PLAS. Under pressure, Dasgupta was forced to order a review of treasury accounts. This, of course, led nowhere because all that could be inferred was the quantum of funds expended by the ddos. The Calcutta High Court has described the report on the treasuries as "perfunctory".

Evidently, the economic wizards of the Left Front have met their nemesis in the CAG -- a department it long considered toothless and adept only at producing voluminous and outdated fact-sheets. When Chief Minister Jyoti Basu agreed in February to initiate an inquiry into the pla muddle, he probably did not reckon with what was in store for his Government. For, it is now more than clear that he and his ministers cannot forever go on giving excuses to justify the irregular operation of the PLAS.

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