Coimbatore:
Five panchayat officials in K Madhapur village, who oversaw the Swachh Bharat Mission works there since 2015, were suspended on Friday after senior officials found discrepancies in the implementation of the scheme.
The officials had siphoned off lakhs of rupees by showing old toilets as newly-constructed. The order was passed after the district rural development agency officials conducted inspections and submitted a report regarding the scam that was brought out by TOI on February 20.
The village panchayat, with a population of nearly 4,500 people, had got sanctions to set up 423 individual household toilets under various central government schemes during 2015-2016. Not just fake beneficiaries posed in front of the toilets to claim the money, some toilets that were constructed several years ago were painted with the Swachh Bharat logo to get the benefit from the scheme. The panchayat officials had uploaded fake photographs on the central government website.
As per the report uploaded on the Swachh Bharat Mission website, 158 toilets were constructed during the period under various central government schemes at a cost of Rs 12,000 each. Of this money, each beneficiary was given Rs 3,000 and the remaining money was siphoned off by the contractors, engineers and panchayat officials.
The suspended officials are secretary of Chemmandampalayam village panchayat Gunasekaran, secretary of Arasur village panchayat Ganeshmurthy, secretary of Nilambur panchayat Shyam, block development officer of Sulur Jayashree and assistant engineer Rajeshwari of Sulur taluk.
They were penalised under 17B of Tamil Nadu civil services, discipline and appeal rules for incurring financial losses to the government. The money will be recovered from them.
