Manipur Water Resource and Relief and Disaster Management Minister Awangbow Newmai has rejected allegations that the government has misappropriated funds sanctioned by the Centre to repair river banks and termed it totally baseless.
He made clarification to a group of media persons at his official residence located at Lamphel, on Wednesday.
Reportedly, a print media outlet had repeatedly reported that a group of engineers of the Water Resources Department conspired with contractors and took Rs 90 crore and the remaining amount was not used. It is a totally baseless news report, it is to demoralise department officials, said the minister.
It is true that the fund was sanctioned by the Central government under the Flood Management and Border Areas Programme (FMBAP) scheme. Under the scheme, the centre gave approval to sanction Rs 460 crore to the state under FMBAP, he said and claimed that the project is being implemented in strict compliance with all formalities right from the issuance of work order to the current stage.
In the first instalment, Rs 52.38 crore was released and after that, according to work progress Rs 44.51 crore has been paid as payment, the minister said. The payment was done after the ministry's monitoring and submission of utilisation certificate (UC) to the ministry, the minister added.
And, the second instalment of Rs 76.63 crore was released on September, 2022, he added.
So, the news report of February 21 by the newspaper daily, alleging inability to submit UC is false and it is to defame the engineers of the department, the minister said.
He appealed to the media to find out the truth and facts before publishing the report from concerned officials. The report misled the general public as well as demoralised the department officials, he said.
The same local newspaper had published the same news repeatedly, so a suo-cause notice will be issued according to law, he added.
