Alleging inaction by officials of the Dambo Rongjeng Community and Rural Development Block to complaints of diversion of funds meant for beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), villagers of Nongchram, along with local NGO leaders from Rongjeng visited Chief Secretary MS Rao today seeking redressal.
The villages had earlier submitted a complaint to the East Garo Hills Deputy Commissioner over the alleged collusion of village employment council (VEC) officials of their village as well as that of the block after what was supposed to benefit them went into the names of ghost beneficiaries who did not exist.
As proof, the villagers provided the names of the beneficiaries that were supposed to get PMAY houses but whose funds were diverted to others.
“There has been a diversion of funds from genuine beneficiaries to bogus ones. This has been going on for many years but has gone unnoticed. These irregularities have been brought to the notice of the concerned authorities but to no avail,” one of the victims of the fraud, Niben Sangma, said.
According to the complainants, an amount of Rs 52,000 in the first tranche was transferred to the bogus beneficiaries in 2019-20. They provided a list of 14 such genuine beneficiaries who had been cheated in their village.
The details of such anomalies were found after cross checking the PMAY-G and other related mobile apps which show that the persons who received the first installment were not even on the list.
“The names of the beneficiaries on the list are either non-existent or dead. Even the names of the beneficiaries that figure on the list appear just as letters like JVUUHV, JZSDCG, NJGJDCS and even ‘unknown’. However, the PMAY IDs and work code that appear are the ones of the genuine beneficiaries,” added another victim, Pobing Momin.
More surprising was that the family member names of the ghost beneficiaries matched the ones with the real beneficiaries.
The complainants added that with PMAY and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) being convergent schemes, signatures of beneficiaries are being taken in the name of wage payment under muster roll so that the money can be transferred to bogus accounts.
The complainants asserted that the anomalies cannot be a technical aberration and were done intentionally to serve the purpose of vested interests.
After their complaint failed to get any response from the block, with no action being taken against anyone involved, the villagers have now approached Rao for a free and fair investigation and punishment for those involved in cheating the poor villagers.
Officials from the C&RD Block office could not be reached for comment.
