New Delhi: A recent report by Madhya Pradesh’s accountant general has revealed large-scale corruption in several stages of the state’s free nutrition scheme for women and children – the Take Home Ration (THR) scheme, according to a report by NDTV.Based on an investigation of around 24% (around 12 lakh) of the scheme’s 45.98 lakh registered intended beneficiaries, the accountant general produced a 36-page report which highlighted leakages and corruption at various stages of delivery – from fake trucks for transporting the ration to inflated numbers of registered beneficiaries.The accountant general has reportedly written to the chief secretary to further investigate the matter and fix responsibility. Of the total number of women and children registered under the scheme, there are 34.69 lakh children aged between six months and three years; 14.25 lakh pregnant women and lactating mothers; and 0.64 lakh adolescent out-of-school girl children aged between 11 and 14.Inflated number of beneficiariesIn 2018, the Union and state governments had directed the department of Women and Child Development (WCD) to identify the number of schoolgirls who would be eligible for free rations under the scheme by April of that year. However, the department didn’t complete this process until February, 2021.In 2020, state WCD minister Imarti Devi was forced to resign from her post after suffering a defeat in the by-elections. Following this, the department came under the supervision of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan himself.Further, while the department of school education had identified the number of out-of-school girls to be at 9,000 in 2018-19, the WCD department had put the same figure at 36.08 lakh, without ever conducting a baseline survey.While undertaking the present investigation, the accountant general examined 49 anganwadi centres in eight districts in the state. While it was revealed that only three out-of-school girls were registered, the WCD department had 63,748 listed as beneficiaries and claimed to have helped 29,104 from 2018-21.According to the NDTV report, this amounts to falsified rations to the tune of Rs 110.83 crore.Also read: MP Marriage Assistance Scheme Scam: EOW Investigating 20 Banks, 93 Gram PanchayatsFalse trucks registeredSix manufacturing plants working under the scheme had claimed to have transported 1,125.64 metric tonnes of ration, which would amount to Rs 6.94 crore. However, during the investigation, when the registrations of the trucks used for the transport of rations were cross-checked with transport department records, the vehicles registered were revealed to be cars, auto-rickshaws and even motorcycles.Manufacturing plants over-reporting production Six manufacturing plants in the state’s Badi, Dhar, Mandla, Rewa, Sagar and Shivpuri areas were found to have reported production levels considerably beyond what they were rated and permitted to produce.These six plants reported a supply of 821 metric tonnes of ration amounting to Rs 4.95 crore, however, they did not have that much available to them to begin with. Further, when actually ration production was compared with the amount of raw materials needed and the amount of electricity reportedly consumed, a discrepancy of Rs 58 crore was revealed. Moreover, in the eight districts investigated, Child Development Project Officers (CDPO) were found to have received a total of 97,000 metric tonnes of ration, but only distributed 86,000 metric tonnes to the anganwadis. The 11,000 metric tonnes of missing rations, which were not found at the warehouses either, amounted to Rs 62.72 crore.The THR programme is overseen by the additional chief secretary of the WCD department, Ashok Shah, who is assisted by a state-level director, 10 joint directors, 52 district programme officers and 453 CDPOs.A Hindustan Times report notes that Shah chalked up the discrepancies revealed by the accountant general as “clerical errors”.No quality checks conductedQuality checks on the ration, meant to be conducted at multiple levels of the supply chain, were found to have gone undone. The manufacturing plants and the anganwadis are required to send the ration for quality inspection to an independent lab, however, this was never done and therefore, there is no way to ascertain the quality of rations being supplied to the beneficiaries. Further, officials in the eight examined districts were found to have not inspected the anganwadis for internal quality control either, from 2018-2021.“Audit, therefore, recommends GoMP (government of Madhya Pradesh) to investigate these issues through an independent agency and fix the responsibility of officials at all levels – CDPOs, DPOs, plant officials, and officials who arranged for transportation, etc., and all other officials who were directly or indirectly involved in these frauds or facilitated the frauds due to their negligence at all levels,” the Hindustan Times quoted the report as saying.Further, the report recommends a complete overhaul of the scheme and the implementation of an IT system to avoid fraud in the future.
