Anti-corruption drive: Nagar inspects shops in Ajmer-Sep 22, 2010

Anti-corruption drive: Nagar inspects shops in Ajmer

TNN, Sep 22, 2010, 06.43am IST

Tags:gopal lal meena|bpl|babu lal nagar|anti-corruption
AJMER:The food and supplies minister, Babu Lal Nagar, on Tuesday inspected cooperative food supply shops in the district and suspended the manager of a village service cooperative society at Patan, Gopal Lal Meena.

He found heavy irregularities in almost every food shop. Nagar issued a warning to Hari Shanker Goyal, district supply officer, and told him to control corruption among his staff. "There is much corruption in the department but we cannot do anything as we are facing shortage of employees," said Nagar.

Nagar came to Ajmer in the morning to inspect the government food supply shops during the Customer Awareness Week. He was first taken to Patan village where he found that the food given by government to BPL was not distributed. When he checked the stock register he found major irregularities. He suspended the manager Meena and rbuked food inspector Neeraj Jain for not verifying the stock after July.

The minister then went to Sillora village and found irregularities in the government shop. The villagers of Shrinager accused the government shopowner of blackmarketing.

"The shopkeeper on interrogation and verification of the stock register admittedt he had sold 100 litres of kerosene in the blackmarket," said Nagar. The shopkeeper Yatender Bhandari was then let off with a warning. Nagar then went to Nasirabad and found domestic gas cylinders were used in sweetshops and he ordered their seizure.

People at Nasirabad crowded round the minister and accused a gas agency is charging Rs 8 extra even when they collected the cylinder from the godown of the agency. He called the gas agency owner an told him not to charge such money, the owner agreed to refund the extra money to customers.

The minister admitted to the media that corruption was rampant just because the officials are corrupt.

"The Mukhya Mantri Aan Suraksha Yogana is in the grip of corruption and the department is responsible for this," Nagar confessed. He said, "We are now introducing steps in which the department will lodge an FIR in 420 IPC against the shopkeeper and the laboratory will verify whether he is using synthetics in food products."

On the issue of charges against himself, Nagar said, "The matter is with ACB and they are investigating it. Our chief minister is sensative person and therefore he ordered a probe." He said the charges against him awere baseless.