The Oxford dictionary meaning of Adviser denotes a person who advises and Advisory means giving advice. So, as far as Municipal Council Advisory Board is concerned, the appointed Advisers should have been eminent personalities who possess qualities and background in matters relating to multifarious activities of Civic Organizations like Dimapur Municipal Council. Advisers are meant to be experienced citizens whose opinions can be sought in formulating policies and programs for city development and sound up-keep. In other word, the Advisers duty is only advisory in nature and nothing more or nothing less. Such Advisers are appointed only to assist the Municipal/Town Councils as consultants. However, in Nagaland the NPF Government has destroyed this spirit and brushing aside public welfare and interest, they displayed highhandedness in appointing only NPF leaders as Advisers in the Civic bodies throughout Nagaland making the Civic bodies a complete monopoly of NPF party organizations and acting contrary to the basis and spirit of Advisory in character, these NPF leaders shared assignments in various fields as Adviser-in-charges and started looting public funds with impunity.
The emergence of Dimapur Municipal Council issue which is dogged with gross mismanagement and irregularities, is a classic example of NPF Governments evil design to usurp the power and authority of all Municipal and Town Councils in Nagaland and loot public funds. In fact, this virtually proved the total fallout of the misdeed of NPF Government.
Therefore, in view of plunging the DMC into utter chaos and disorder which led to exhaustion of crores of public funds, the Chief Minister and Urban Development Minister should own moral responsibility for such misdeed by their party men and demit office outrightly.
The prevalent of anarchy and total norms deficit, particularly in Dimapur Municipal Council can be briefly cited as follows.
The Nagaland Municipal Act, 2001 (sanction of budget estimate) says that income and expenditure budget estimate of the Municipality shall be prepared within specific time and shall submit for adoption. If the budget estimate is not adopted by the 15th day of February of that year, the Chief Officer of the Municipality shall submit to the Government for approval. The approval sanction shall be returned to the Municipality before 31st March of that year with or without modification. But in the instant of Dimapur DMC, there was no preparation of income and expenditure budget estimate for any calendar/financial year. But astonishingly, the DMC used to project only sources of revenue income by levying number of times every year. As such, the DMC has been consistently collecting huge revenue within its jurisdiction without rhyme or reason. As yet the DMC has not taken up a single project at its own effort. Even balance sheet were not prepared in time for audit scrutiny.
Further, irregularities have been detected about unauthorized reduction of lease deed amount without approval, unauthorized issue of work order and lease deed agent, deduction of lease amount through unofficial slip without the approval of the CEO, keeping of un-authorized sub-cashiers besides the main casher, etc.
In our country, Mumbai is known as the commercial capital of India so also, Dimapur is the commercial capital of Nagaland as well as neighbouring areas of Assam and the gateway of Manipur. Therefore, this implies that the business transaction of Dimapur city runs in crores daily, so a person who sits in the power chair in DMC and indulge in corrupt deeds get golden opportunity to squander crores. In the same vein, the Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee deemed it appropriate to highlight the prevalent corrupt practices in DMC on the strength of audit of DMC financial transactions by the Audit party of the Government from 1/4/2010 to 31/10/2011 and 21/11/2011 to 4/12/2011 and also as evident from the reports and documents of the Chief Executive Officer, DMC, Dimapur about gross financial malpractices and huge commission taken by one Shri. S. Phukuto Zimo, Advisor-in-Charge of Toll & revenue, DMC. Some pertinent facts of financial irregularities are as follows:-
(1) Misappropriation of lump sum House rent security advance to the tune of Rs. 26.40 lakhs.
The Board had decided to enhance stall rent in comparison with the prevailing market.
The Board has unanimously agreed to enhance stall rent @ Rs. 2,500/- per allotee (tenant) as lump sum in advance as House rent security, subject to refundable basis.
As decided by the Board, the office of the DMC printed 25 Nos of receipt books containing 1-100 leaf per book. Subsequently the office had issued the following collectors for collection of said rent.
Sl. No B/No Name of collector Date of issue Deposited to DMC Outstanding
1. 1. Naomi 25-10-10 Rs. 2,50,000/- Nil
2. 2. Toshili -do- Rs. 2,50,000/- Nil
3. 3. Naomi 04-11-10 Rs. 2,50,000/- Nil
4. 4. -do- 10-11-10 Rs. 2,50,000/- Nil
5. 5. -do- 12-11-10 Rs. 2,50,000/- Nil
6. 6. -do- 16-11-10 Nil Rs. 2,50,000/-
7. 7. Katoli 22-11-10 Nil Rs. 2,50,000/-
8. 8. Kangzangle -do- Nil Rs. 2,50,000/-
9. 9. -do- 08-12-10 Nil Rs. 2,50,000/-
10. 10. Naomi 15-12-10 Nil Rs. 2,50,000/-
11. 11. -do- 29-12-10 Nil Rs. 2,50,000/-
12. 12. -do- 12-01-11 Nil Rs. 2,50,000/-
13. 13. -do- 10-02-11 Nil Rs. 2,50,000/-
14. 14. Kangzangle 28-02-11 Nil ` 2,50,000/-
15. 15. -do- 22-03-11 Nil Rs. 2,50,000/-
16. 16. Toshili 31-05-11 Nil Rs. 2,50,000/-
(Current) Total: Rs. 26,40,000/-
As per deposit register receipt book, Sl.No 1-5 had been deposited to DMC account. But it was found that 11 receipts books in which collosal amount had been collected by them from the allotees were submitted to Advisor revenue-in-charge. However, it was noticed that the aforesaid collected amount was not deposited to the DMC account till date. Hence, it is a clear case of financial defalcation.
(2) Heavy cash retention and irregularities.
Rule 85 of Nagaland Municipal Act, 2001 states that all money received on account of Municipal fund of a Municipality shall be deposited with the State Bank of India or any Nationalized bank of India without delay. The collected amount should be deposited on the same day positively or by next working day. Retention of heavy cash balance is viewed seriously as per financial discipline. But huge cash balance retention every month is found to be the regularly irregular system of DMC.
(3) Irregularities on collection of tax in Railway sector amounting to Rs. 60.42 lakhs.
As per DMC Advisory Committee Members decision, the toll tax items on railway goods/cement were to be deposited directly to the DMC account but as per audit finding such deposit was not done and the Advisor revenue i/c retained such huge amount for months.
(4) Unlimited expenditure incurred on sanitation and development:-
It is a fact that DMC is earning huge amount of revenue but in absence of regular and proper mechanism of spending and absence of formulating works program, people who are manning machineries and development sections seem to be acting random in incurring expenditures to a whooping tune of Rs. 1,71,10,169/- crore as per findings of the Audit authority.
(5) Unauthorized reduction of lease deed award and shortfall of Rs.4,77,000/-
In view of non adherence of Government standing norms, it appears that the day to day functioning of DMC is in utter chaos consequent upon which the toll tax standing amount of Rs. 80,000/- per month was willfully reduced to Rs. 60,000/- per month to 5 lease contractors thereby causing the loss of ` 4,77,000/- revenue to the DMC ex-chequer during July 2010 to March 2011.
(6) Temporary misappropriation of allotment fee of stalls and reconstructing fee amounting to Rs. 10,46,000/-
Allotment and reconstructions fees collected form various allotees have not been deposited into DMC account to the tune of Rs.10,46,000/- at the time of conducting audit by the Government.
(7) Misappropriation of toll tax amounting to Rs. 1,20,000/-
The lease contractor i/c of Flyover market did not deposit 1st instalment collection payment to DMC treasury amounting to Rs. 1,20,000/-
(8) Misappropriation of market toll amounting to Rs. 1,12,500/-
Vehicle entry toll tax for 3 gates, though collected, was not deposited to the DMC account till the time of scrutiny of documents to a tune of Rs. 1,12,500/-
(9) The advertisement and hoarding revenue collected amounting to Rs. 2,97,960/- was not deposited to DMC account by collectors.
(10) Irregularity of Outstanding revenue of Rs. 39,40,000/- under toll tax head
Out of 37 lease contractors who were awarded work orders, 19 toll items did not pay monthly instalment and even some lease contractors did not deposit single monthly instalment. This led to a huge outstanding arrears of Rs. 39,48,000 lakhs.
(11) Outstanding House rent revenue of Rs. 50,38,434/-
The market allotees had to pay monthly rent to the Concerned authority. However, it is found that as many as 384 allotees did not pay rent for a long period due to which outstanding house rent comes to Rs. 50,83,434 lakhs.
The misappropriation amount indicated above alone comes to more than Rs. 5.00 crores.
As if not enough in his looting spree, the DMC authoritys records revealed that the Lessees on toll tax had paid the following under mentioned amount to Shri. S. Phukuto Zimo, the then Advisor-in-charge of Toll & revenue, DMC.
1. Vitoka Sumi (Live stock) - Rs. 4,00,000 lakhs
2. Akho Angami (Tamul/pan) - Rs. 16,00,000 lakhs
3. Akaho Awomi (NH 39 entry) - Rs.34,50,000 lakhs
4. Akaho Awomi (Fanta/logs, Iron scrap & empty bottles) - Rs. 10,00,000 lakhs
5. Lima Khima (Second hand goods) - Rs. 8,00,000 lakhs
6. Hotolu (Auto parking-Town area) - Rs. 15,00,000 lakhs
7. Kakuho Sumi (Taxi parking) - Rs. 4,00,000 lakhs
8. Akaho Awomi (Goods entry: old Dhansiri bridge, Walford & Nagarjan point) - Rs.4,00,000 lakhs
Grand total: Rs.95,50,000 lakhs
A glaring reason why this financial mess has been cropped up can be attributed to State Government and Concerned authoritys failure to tune up/streamline the undesirable persistent system of functioning of DMC though Government was well aware of this financial onslaught for many years. In view of NPF Governments apathy the NPCC considered it bounden duty to take up this issue and subsequently lodged a case in the State Vigilance Commission.
The Congress is determined to take this public issue to its logical end and be it known to the NPF Leaders and workers that cancerous corruption is a common disease that affects all sections of people and effort should be given by all sections of people to give the correct doses of medicine to eradicate such problem concertedly.
Corruption is also such social disease which knows no colour or boundary. Therefore, through this statement, the NPCC amplify its stand that beyond the boundary of Congress, BJP or NPF and without any bias attitude, the party is pursuing this issue as such, it is awful that the NPF party is whipping up politics to cover up the misdeeds of their own NPF bandits.
Sd/-
(NILLO)
Vice President, NPCC
(KHUTOVI)
Vice President, NPCC
