RTI Report Reveals Lavish Expenses Of Odisha Babus

Deogarh: A Right To Information (RTI) enquiry has revealed startling facts about trifling expenditures made on the renovation of Deogarh Collector’s residential office.

As per reports, lakhs of rupees were allegedly spent on repairing and renovating the district collector’s government quarters in Deogarh. Various IAS officers occupying the quarters had spent a lot of tax payer’s money on the residence-cum-office during their tenures in the past four years.

While Babus come and go, the renovation work never ceased to exist as is evident from the fact that a whopping Rs 90 lakh rupees was spent on the quarters in last four years.

A RTI reply in this connection has revealed that Rs 14.34 Lakh was spent on the quarters in 2015-16, Rs 3.68 Lakh in 2016-17, Rs 8.08 Lakhs in 2017-18 and Rs 26.8 Lakh was spent in 2018-19.

While the lavish expenditures of the officers have baffled the common masses, even former bureaucrats are also shocked to come across the RTI report.

Spending exorbitant amount of tax payer’s money on their luxury is not new for bureaucrats. Recently IAS officer, Rashmita Panda, posted as the district Collector of Sundargarh was transferred after she was accused of spending Rs. 70 Lakh on renovation of her government quarters in just six months.

Rules say that a special permission is needed for spending more than Rs 5 lakh on the government quarters, so it is alleged that the IAS officers reportedly divided the work and the expenses in many small repairing jobs to loot the government exchequer.

Former bureaucrat, Sahadev Sahu condemned the report and said, “ Officers are allowed to do minor repair works, but for major works amounting to more than Rs 5 Lakhs, they need to get permission from the department. This is a blatant disregard of government rules. A new house can be erected with this much amount.”