Call for accountability from govt could get one booked for sedition like how it happened with the celebrities who expressed concern over mob lynching
Deepak Laad
Some recent facetious misactions and inactions of State government and municipal bodies looked quixotic and humorous, but some have caused serious revenue losses.
The truth came out that our Chief Minister had to confirm to the Centre about the state becoming open-defecation free simply to avoid embarrassment to the Prime Minister. So we in Porvorim have to change our perception and believe that the plastic water bottle carrying brigade climbing the slopes of Secretariat area in the early mornings, from where the CM’s confirmation to PM originated, go there to water the plants and have nothing to do with answering nature’s call.
PM Modi’s address at the United Nation’s General Assembly emphatically announced to the world that we Indians have stopped emptying our bowels in the open. PM Modi, the epitome of patriotism is infallible, so anyone doubting or calling in question his gospels may be branded as anti-national and end up being slapped with sedition charges, just like the 47 actors, writers, intellectuals who wrote to him about the rise in the number of lynching incidents.
These days district magistrates show the kind of zeal in booking contrarians under sedition charges that the colonial masters, who brought in the draconian laws, might have lacked.
From open-defecation free to the issue of potholes, one could write a potboiler. Recently, local organisers who announced a rally to protest against the deteriorated condition of the roads in the state issued a subsequent clarification watering down the term ‘protest’ to ‘awareness campaign’. When we raise questions about the government’s inaction on repairing the roads despite repeated pleas and petitioning, protest is the apt word. But protests these days can land you straight in judicial custody even in the dead of the night, as it happened with some Aarey residents resisting felling of trees. So people continue to ‘create awareness’ and suffer in silence the horrific condition of the roads.
These days, there is an overwhelming craze for using apps in the government departments. The stark reality is, one has to search for remnants of pre-existent roads in the potholes, so the app may serve little purpose. Instead of this idiocy of watching the potholes on an app, like ISRO scientists watching moon craters in their labs, it would be sensible to send the PWD engineers and workforce to take stock of the road conditions across the state and then decide on whether the potholes are to be filled or the roads need to be rebuilt.
The CM who has been woken up by the shrinking state revenues is huddling up with entrepreneurs in earnest. On the other hand, his ministers have been sloths in collecting the dues from the companies and traders. The power ministry, for example, has outstanding receivables to the tune of about Rs 120 crores today, because it slept on it for years. They could have saved themselves all this trouble of taking the defaulters to court and squander money on the advocates, if only they had taken imperative action of power disconnection at initial stages of defaults. Court cases are time-consuming so at a later date they may settle for a compromise accepting amounts lesser than those originally billed, leave alone collecting the interest on
delayed payments.
The municipal authorities too look ineffective, inefficient, most gullible and prone to fall for frauds -- the way the Corporation of the City of Panaji demonstrates. A person who was awarded the contract to collect parking fees made money and fled, cheating them out of fee receivables amounting to lakhs. It is a mystery why the amounts were allowed to accumulate in the first place, when the fees are collected daily and why a ‘bank guarantee’ equivalent to the value of the contract was not insisted upon to safeguard any breach. The floating casinos minting money too owe them revenues in lakhs for the roadside digital advertising screens. It’s time they are asked to pay or pull down the advertisements. Why wait to file court cases at later dates?
For some unfathomable reason the Corporation has failed to sign agreements with the kiosk allottees in the market complex after all these years and for that reason are unable to collect rents. Pending legal formalities, why did the corporation not think of collecting rents from whoever conducted business in those kiosks on the line they collected ‘sopo tax’
every day?
The Corporation that has failed to collect its revenues has also failed to foot its electricity bills for the last five years that are now accumulated to a whopping sum of Rs 5 crore. For some strange reasons the government has been quiet and did not follow up for the payments. The amounts are sizable and it is surprising how non-payment by the Corporation and non-receipt by the Government went undetected by the
auditors?
These are serious acts of omissions and the officers handling recoveries, the Commissioner, the Mayor and likewise, the responsible officers of the ministry concerned and the Minister should be held accountable. Instead of apologising for shameful failure to fulfill their respective duties, the Mayor, Commissioner and Minister these days go to the press telling tales with uncalled for bravado and blustering.
Well, it is also possible that all the dues have been collected diligently but instead of landing in Government’s and Corporation’s coffer, could have gone to line the pockets of some influential persons. Scams are not new to us.
When was the last time we recovered from scamsters?
