Will improve working of Home Deptt: Goel, Vaid tell LA panel

JAMMU : The Principal Secretary, Home, R K Goyal and Director General of Police, S P Vaid on Friday have assured a panel of the state legislature of improvement in the working of the Home department.
The two officers were taken to task by the legislators on various inconsistencies in the functioning of Home Department pointed out by Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

The officers, who were participating in a meeting of Committee on Public Accounts (PAC) of State Legislative Assembly briefed the Committee about the action taken by the department on the CAG’s audit paras.

The issues including non-utilization of equipment supplied under Police Modernization scheme for a forensic laboratory resulted in infructuous expenditure of Rs 54.75 lakh and non-utilization of two District Mobile Forensic Science Laboratories that resulted in blocking of funds to the extent of Rs 83.00 lakh besides short deduction of labourcess, had irked the legislators which sought the response from the two top officers.

Deputy Accountant General, Audit, V K Bakshi also pointed out the observations made by the CAG in its report and gave certain suggestions regarding the settlement of the paras by the department.
To this, while briefing about the step taken by the department, the two officers assured the Committee to take the necessary steps to improve its working, following which the Committee decided to drop some audit paras accordingly.

Earlier, in the meeting convened by PAC under the Chairmanship of MLA, Mohammad Akbar Lone, Legislators Shamima Firdous, Ravinder Raina, Jeevan Lal, Mohammad Yousuf Bhat, Pawan Kumar Gupta and Firdous Ahmed Tak also participated and gave their views regarding early settlement of the audit paras.

Threadbare discussions were held on Action Taken Reports submitted by the Home department regarding Audit Paras including Expenditure on Police establishments not approved for inclusion in the project, police computerization and present status of Crime and Criminal Tracking Networking and Systems (CCTNS) projects.

Special DGP, V K Singh, ADGP Munir Khan, IG, Personal, PHQ, J P Singh, IG, Headquarter, PHQ, Anand Jain, Special Secretary, Assembly, R L Sharma, Additional Secretary Assembly, Manzoor Ahmed Baba, Deputy Secretary Assembly, Farooq Ahmed Khan besides other senior officers of Police Department and Assembly Secretariat were also present in the meeting.