Housing Corporation scandal

“As per the latest figures, the accumulated liabilities of the Housing Corporation are to the tune of Rs. 225.78 crore and the previous losses are Rs. 115 crore. The current losses are Rs. 27.52 crore. The fraud and losses have been accumulated over the last thirty years”, says the interim report of an enquiry conducted on the directions of the Minister of State for Cooperatives into the functioning and financial irregularities of the Jammu and Kashmir Cooperative Housing Corporation. No annual audit report has been submitted after 2006. A cursory view of the preliminary report suggests that the Corporation is seething with financial irregularities and administrative indiscipline. One can easily feel that fraud and hoodwinking have been perpetrated on a very large scale in this organization and there seems no accountability. It is more than six years that no audit report has been submitted and when immediate officer took some action against the concerned official, nepotism swung into action and protected the errant official obviously to the humiliation of the senior official and at the cost of discipline and good governance. The Government has stood guarantee to the huge loans Corporation has taken from LIC and other lending agencies. The Government should constitute a full-fledged Commission of Inquiry into this scandal and fix responsibility. There seems a nexus of fraudulent officials at work and this should be exposed.