High Court proposes attachment of Akola corporators’ properties
| Date :05-Mar-2020 |
Legal Correspondent :
HC proposes the action over illegal diversion of Government funds, issues notice to them to ‘show cause’
Justice R K Deshpande and Justice Amit Borkar at the High Court here have issued notice to Akola corporators to show cause by March 26 next, as to why their properties should not be directed to be attached by the Collector, for recovery of the Government funds diverted illegally. The court allowed the application for amendment to the PIL filed by social worker Girdhar Harwani seeking additional relief of recovery of the amount of Rs 165 lakh received by Akola Municipal Corporation from the State Government under the 13th Finance Commission and spent illegally for constructing residential bunglow for the Municipal Commissioner.
The court felt that there seemed no repentance and admission of mistakes alleged to have been committed by the coporators by this diversion of funds. Therefore, the court proposed attachment of private property of the corporators who were party to this ‘illegal’ decision of misutilisation of the funds and issued show cause notices to them. The court noted in its order that for this misutilisation of funds, the general body of Akola Municipal Corporation had adopted a resolution.
It has been the stand of the State Government also that these funds have been misutilised. The court pointed out that in response to the court’s order, the court was informed that an amount of Rs 67,81,672/- was refunded by Akola Municipal Corporation to the State Government from the municipal funds. The said amount was sent back by the Government. Inspite of such adjustment, the fact remains that an amount of Rs 1.65 crore has been misutilised from the public funds.
On August 7 last, the High Court had passed an order directing the Mubicipal Commissioner and the corporators to give an undertaking on affidavit to the court that the funds released from the grant of the Finance Commission shall be utilised only for the purpose for which the funds were released and not for any other purpose. Accordingly, the affidavits were placed on the record. The court also noted that though most of the corporators had been served with the court’s notice, none of the corporators, who had been joined to the PIL as party-respondents, were appearing before the court. Adv Shantanu Khedkar appeared for the petitioner. AGP N R Patil (State) and Advocate Sameer Sohoni (Corporation) represented the respondents.