RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, Feb.15: The judgement came in the more than 24-year-old fodder scam case related to the fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 139.5 crore from the Doranda treasury in the fodder scam case but there was no one in the treasury located on the campus of Nepal House secretariat to give their comments on the judgement.
“Matter is very old. There is no staff of that period in the treasury, ” said Manika Sinha when this correspondent visited her office to get comments from old staff.
The business was going as usual in the treasury and there was no discussion taking over the court judgement.
A staff, however, said the entire system of withdrawal from the treasury has changed following the fodder scam. “We have heard that earlier the fax was used for fast communication but that has become a matter of the past. Now everything is online. Financial administration has become more transparent,” the staff said.
A retired officer of commercial tax department said: “Gone are days when treasury officer used to work on the verbal order of deputy commissioner taking a high risk and police officers used to threaten to withdraw force in case of any delay in payment due to technical reasons and used arm twisting exercise to put treasury officers in trouble.”
An official at the treasury office explained the present system saying how leakproof it is.
“The Finance department sends an allotment letter to each department with its copy to treasury officers. The department secretary sanctions the amount according to requirements to their different divisions and shares its copy with the concerned treasury. Then two registers are generated and expenditure and balance are maintained in it. One is for drawing and disbursing officers of different divisions and another for treasury officers. After each transaction, the treasury officer puts his or her signature on his or her register. Apart from this, the treasury officer also puts signature on DDO’s register proper verification to avoid any discrepancy. The transaction is done online thus possibility of error is less and in case of any error detection is easy,” the official said.
