Akhilesh wasted money for SP’s unemployment scheme

After being trounced by the BJP in the Assembly elections, the Samajwadi Party should have braced itself for probes into its misdeeds.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has fired the first projectile at the SP by tabling a damning report in the UP Assembly. Part of the General and Social Sector report, the findings reveal that the Akhilesh Yadav government incurred unnecessary expenditure of Rs 15.06 crore to distribute cheques worth Rs 20.58 crore to beneficiaries of an unemployment scheme.

The needless expenses include Rs 8.07 crore on seating, refreshments and other arrangements for functions held between 2012 and 2013 to distribute cheques to the state’s unemployed youth. The remaining sum of Rs 6.99 crore was spent on transporting 1.26 lakh beneficiaries to the venues. These figures make it amply clear that the SP, while projecting the scheme as its flagship programme, was wasting public money to derive maximum mileage.

It also shows how power is abused for electoral gains. Spending a whopping Rs 15 crore on functions is unacceptable because it is the taxpayer’s money that Akhilesh and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav had squandered away to shore up their public image. Through such noisy displays of state largesse, Akhilesh was playing to the gallery.

Ideally, the Berozgari Bhatta Yojana for youth in 69 districts should have been a silent affair with the money being transferred to the recipient’s bank accounts. But the CAG report states that the former state government didn’t think that payment to the beneficiary through the banking system should be binding. It’s worth remembering that when the SP was voted to power, the young CM had promised to end corruption and usher in clean governance. Going by the CAG report, it’s evident that he didn’t make good of his promise to serve the people. He might find it difficult to wriggle out of the mess.