Now, audit team finds holes in Bhandara LS poll expenses

Nagpur: The audit team which had found a lot of irregularities committed by Nagpur district collectorate while spending election fund during Lok Sabha polls has found similar lapses in Bhandara collectorate too. Crores were spent without maintaining records. In many cases items were purchased or services were hired without tendering. Such an audit is being conducted for the first time and hence revenue officials have landed in a soup.
The audit was ordered by divisional commissioner Anup Kumar and done by officials Bhagyashree Jadhav, Prakash Akre and Rajesh Dhone. The commissioner had issued a notice to the Bhandara collector. Unlike Nagpur collector, the Bhandara submitted a reply albeit very late.
While Kumar had shown lot of zeal in conducting the audit, in face of damaging revelations he is now calling the lapses as non-financial in nature and hence minor.
Nagpur collectorate had spent Rs 18.70 crore on elections as it was handling two LS constituencies – Nagpur and Ramtek. Bhandara office spent Rs 4.70 crore as only three assembly segments of Bhandara-Gondia parliamentary constituency were under its jurisdiction, the rest being under Gondia office.
The audit report states in the very beginning that instead of getting work done through tenders or rate contract, the election officers directly placed orders. No work over Rs 50,000 can be done without tendering.
The deputy election officer of Bhandara neither maintained a stock register for various forms used in election process nor watch register for videography. No records exist regarding the number of computers hired. Consequently, it is not possible to say whether the quantities ordered were optimum and whether whole of it was used or not.
Around Rs 20.79 lakh was spent on videography. The audit report says that this was on the higher side. Large amount was spent on office stationery and other items. One bidder had quoted lowest rates for 70 items. However, the officials called the bidder offering 18 items at lowest rate for negotiations and awarded him the tender. Gajanan Xerox and Printers was the beneficiary of this process.
No register was kept of photocopied items and hence it is impossible to say how many photocopies were made. Around Rs 6.42 lakh were spent on photocopying.
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Cooperative society favoured
In case of election forms, the bidder offering lowest prices was not called for negotiations. Instead the remaining two were called and order was placed with one of them. This bidder had not submitted any of the mandatory documents. Samarth Bahu-uddeshiya Seva Sahakari Sanstha was the beneficiary of this irregularity. In case of pandals too this cooperative society was awarded the tender in a similar fashion.