BENGALURU: Former deputy mayor S. Harish on Monday alleged that BBMP IT advisor Sheshadri has misappropriated a whopping Rs 5,649 crore, and demanded a detailed probe. “The BBMP collected Rs 6,680 crore from property tax, but deposited only Rs 1,031 crore. What happened to the remaining 5,469 crore,” he asked.
Mr Harish said that the Indian Centre for Social Transformation (ICSE), which offers customised GPMS cloud-based computing solutions to BBMP, has discovered that there was no time-bound bank reconciliation, resulting in large-scale leakage.
Flashing the letters written to BBMP Commissioner G. Kumar Naik by the ICSE, dated March 19, 2016, Mr Harish said that the letter reveals, “An analysis of the property tax receipts for 2012-13 and 2013-14, reveals a large-scale variation. The statistics shows that there was a collection of Rs. 6,680 crore but the FMS online figure shows collection of property tax as only Rs. 1031 crore.
Thereby there is a mismatch of Rs. 5,649 crore. This is a serious issue. Revenue and IT and account departments must explain how such financial irregularities were allowed. Since BBMP has not bothered to take up reconciliation work of 936 bank accounts under the operation, this mismatch has not been rectified even to this date.”
Chief Auditor of BBMP and CAG have made strong observations on the lack of financial system in BBMP including absence of bank reconciliation system.
Mr Harish said he was not blaming any party but demanded a CBI or higher probe into the alleged misappropriation, especially against Mr Sheshadri whose role is suspected. The guilty should be punished, he demanded along with former mayors Katte Satyanarayan and S. K. Nataraj.
Although BBMP claimed that about 16 lakh properties were brought under the tax net, receipts were found only for 10 lakh properties. What happened to the rest, he asked.
Mr Sheshadri is trying to hush up the mega scam by replacing the ICSE software with Cauvery to ensure that the previous data was not available for verification. When the BBMP has software which is offered free what is the need for paid software, he asked.
“Although documents say that around 182 cheques bounced, what happened to these cheques? There are no records to show if the money was collected and what happened to the money,” he said.
