Excelsior Correspondent
KATRA, Mar 24: Alleging that the huge bungling of funds took place during 2011-12 and 2012-13 in the Municipal Committee Katra, Welfare Committee Katra (WCK) demanded Chairman, Shrine Board, and Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, for an early transparent and vibrant solution, as a number of its development projects have been left in lurch due to huge revenue loss.
The meeting of WCK, which was held today under the chairmanship of Shanker Dogra here today, said that in the year 2010-11, mule and pithoo contract was given to the highest bidder by which Municipal Committee collected highest revenue to the tune of Rs 8.30 crore despite the yatra figure was registered only 87 lakh. On the contrary, in 2011-12, the yatra figure touched the historic mark of 1.01 crore but the revenue collection which should have risen, declined by Rs 2.50 crore and stood at Rs 5.80 crore.
For this, the Committee directly held responsible the wrong and baseless decisions of Municipal Committee Katra revenue collection, which stopped the old practice of giving contract of mule and pithoo to the highest bidder, as was in 2010-11, and asked to run the affairs of revenue collection from pithoo and mule, to the daily wagers, contractuals or permanent employees of Municipal Committee.
The committee members slammed the concerned higher ups in Housing–Urban and Local Bodies headed by the then Cabinet Minister, when the Municipal Committee employees were asked again to run the same pithoo contracts in 2012-13 also despite incurring a huge loss in 2011-12.
“After getting a large number of complaints from devotees of overcharging by pithoos , ponies and palkiwalas on Bhawan track, in the month of Nov-Dec 2012, Shrine Board disallowed all Municipal Committee employees to collect revenue of any kind on the Bhawan track and closed all their revenue collection centres”, said general secretary, WCK, Rishi Ram Saraf, adding without revenue collection from last four months on Bhawan track, Municipal Committee has turned to be incomeless due to which all the development works have come to a halt.
The WCK members including Balkrishan Purohit and Hansraj Sapolia demanded a fair probe in the revenue loss in 2011-12 and 2011-13, adding, whoever were involved in unfair practices should be booked and penalized accordingly.
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