In an interesting twist to the ongoing National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam in Uttar Pradesh the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), during its performance audit probe into the scheme, has come across several incriminating documents revealing that some top state government officials, involved in implementation of NRHM, went on a number of trips abroad particularly in the last three years.
CAG sources said the possibility that these trips may well be linked to siphoning off the NRHM money abroad cannot be ruled out.
Since the auditing watchdog does not have the mandate to conduct these investigations, it will share all relevant documents and details with the CBI that is already conducting a massive investigation into the scam.
The CAG, in its report submitted to the Uttar Pradesh Governor B.L. Joshi on Friday, has already pegged the unaccounted money in the NRHM scheme in the state at `6,706.86 crore over a six-year period, from April, 2005 till March, 2011.
While conducting the audit, sources added, they came across documents revealing that some of the senior officers from state departments like health, family welfare, women and child development and the State Health Society had made several trips abroad.
These officials visited countries in Europe, Middle East and South-East Asia.
Since the CAG has not been able to find some important financial documents related to NRHM’s implementation in the state, officials suspect once all the records are available the actual figure of number of trips and official may actually be much higher.
“Though the CAG is not an investigating agency but during the course of performance audit we did get an opportunity to interact with a large number of government officials. Some of them expressed apprehension that a substantial amount of unaccounted NRHM money may have been stashed abroad,’’ a source pointed out to Deccan Chronicle.
The CAG will convey its apprehensions to the CBI giving them details of the documents that “mysteriously went missing’’ during the performance audit.