JIRIBAM, August 17: In a sensational revelation that could be a severe blow to the Electricity Department, Government of Manipur, it is learnt that the Assistant Engineer and Section Officer in cahoot with some other staffs of the Electricity Jiribam Division had tried to siphone off the income/revenue generated by the division.
Some media persons have found proof in this regard.
It was also found that the concerned Executive Engineer, M Dorendra Sharma had on July 15, 2013 submitted a report on the use of fake ledger (record of amount/bill of the domestic consumers) to the higher authorities and further dispatched letters to the three staff whose involvement in the financial anomaly have been alleged.
There are two sub-divisions namely Jiribam Sub-Division and Sub-Station construction Sub-Division No 6 under the Electricity Dept, Jiribam Division.
The outstanding due of 44 domestic consumers of Leingangpok Village under Jiribam Sub-Division as of December 31, 2012 amounts to Rs 5, 89, 213.
However, on inspection in July 2013, only 28 names of domestic consumers were found in a new ledger for Leingangpokpi village which had 44 domestic consumers earlier, with the names of 16 consumers missing from the new ledger.
While the actual outstanding due of the village amounted to Rs 5,89,213 in the previous ledger, the due in the new ledger amounted to only Rs 21,840.
It is also alleged that W Naba Singh, AE Jiribam Sub-Division; W Yaima Singh, SO II and Y Uttam Singh, Asst Meter Reader (AMR) Jr Bill Clerk are involved in the game.
According to Y Uttam Singh, the new ledger was formed at the behest of W Naba Singh, AE Jiribam Sub-Division.
In the wake of the case, what matters is how much bill amount has been cut in TR5 receipt and how much due amount is there as of now.
It is further learnt that such issues have been present in the Electricity Jiribam Division since a long time but since there were no concrete prove and evidence which could be tabled, no one was willing to act as a whistleblower to the cases.
A section of the Jiribam populace is quite apprehensive about the case saying that huge amount of revenue collected from the Jiri people would have remained unaccounted for many years and that stringent legal actions should be taken up against the accused staffs of the electricity division, if found guilty.
It will be pertinent to mention that since Jiribam is situated under a hot climate zone, electricity is much needed in the area in day-to-day activities.
On this count, M Dorendro, EE Electricity Jiribam Division has stated that he would try his best to generate maximum income/revenue for the government and ensure that people of the sub-division get uninterrupted supply of electric current while adding that he would not spare any officials of the division who are found indulging in such fund swindling cases and neglecting their duties.
The EE further continued that there must have been several counts of such cases of fund swindling in the past.
In such a development, one cannot simply rule out the involvement of such persons in the arsoning of the Electricity department office, Dibong Khunou on December 10, 2010, he further alleged before adding that it could have been carried out to erase all available records concerning to the revenue of the department.