Vigilance chief faces another allegation

KOCHI: The state government's inspection wing of the stores purchase department has found serious irregularities in the purchase of furniture for the offices of the directorate of ports, when

Jacob Thomas

, currently vigilance director, was serving as the director of the department of ports.
The inspecting team has found that the `wooden“ furniture which were claimed to have been purchased from the state-run Forest Industries Travancore (FIT) Limited, in 2012, were actually made of steel and manufactured by Godrej.

The inspection was conducted in 2013 and the main items of purchase under the scrutiny included, among other things, diving equipment, in addition to furniture.

According to the report, a wide variety of furniture were shown to have been purchased from the FIT.

Since the FIT was a government company , civic bodies and government departmentsagencies can purchase wooden furniture from there without floating tenders and the prices were fixed. The ports department paid Rs 43.15 lakh to the FIT for purchasing the furniture. The inspection team has found that almost all the “wooden“ furniture that were claimed to be purchased from the FIT, were made of steel and manufactured by Godrej. This irregularity took place when the FIT could only supply wooden furniture with a fixed price and when it was not authorized to supply Godrej products directly to government departments.

The inspection team has also found that even the final invoice from the FIT was not properly filed and the furniture items were not given serial numbering that were mandatory as per the guidelines.

The report stated that if open tenders had been called for instead of making direct purchase from the FIT, the government would have saved a reasonable amount by way of competitive offers.

The state government also lost a considerable amount as sales tax. The report specifically mentioned that “the whole dealings appear to be fraudulent or intentional“.

The inspection report was one of the exhibits submitted before the high court in the memorandum of the writ petition filed by Benoy AS, a resident of

Thrissur

, on September 23. The inspection team recommended a quick verification at the earliest. However, the QV never took place, after Thomas joined the

VACB

.

Repeated efforts to speak to vigilance director Jacob Thomas over the phone proved futile and SMSes requesting his reaction on the report were also left unaswered.

Allegations baseless, says Achuthanandan

Administrative reforms commission chairman V S Achuthanandan said vigilance director Jacob Thomas is an honest officer. Achuthanandan was speaking to reporters at his residence at

Punnapra

here on Wednesday.

Achuthanandan said some corrupt politicians with vested interests were raising baseless allegations against Jacob Thomas and there was no need for him to resign.“They were trying to disrupt Jacob Thomas from carrying out his duties. They don't want him to perform his duties smoothly. These people should not be allowed to defame him,'' the former CM said .