GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE, OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE CRONIES – SDPI

New Delhi, 20th July 2021: The hints about a huge scam by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in the preliminary report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) are neither shocking nor unexpected, stated MK Faizy, National President of Social Democratic Party of India here today. Welfare of the people, at least of those who voted them to power, let alone the entire population, has never been the agenda of the present BJP-led government at the centre. It is a group of corporate-slaves crept into power through democratic system to sell out the country to their masters, said Faizy.Narendra Modi government’s BharatNet programme, which intends to connect six lakh villages with high-speed Internet, failed to take off due to financial irregularities, says CAG in its preliminary finding. It is unheard of awarding contract without inviting tenders by the government. And this is the way through which people are being looted. The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) has been allotting projects worth crores to various private partners without issuing any tender.The report has pointed out those payments of Rs. 386.42 crore and Rs 116.50 crore were made between July 2019 and December 2020 to Common Service Centres (CSC) under the Ministry. The arrangement is part of a tripartite agreement for operations and maintenance of optical fibre cable network, telecom equipment and Wi-Fi access points between the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) and CSC done in July 2019 and approved by the Digital Communication Commission (DCC) in September 2020.In its 94-page draft report, the CAG says “Despite a huge payment to CSC, set up by the Ministry, the maintenance of cable and other infrastructure was not found efficient in various circles.” This resulted in poor quality of service at a grama panchayat or village block level. There are also mentions about many instances where work was completed only on paper. The CAG findings seem to be just the tip of the iceberg. Removal of Ravi Shankar Prasad from the cabinet during the recent reshuffle appears to be to an effort to evade a controversy erupting in the upcoming Parliament session, and this act endorses the findings of CAG about a scam.Since the entire ministry under the leadership of Modi are working to boost their corporate cronies, demanding an enquiry about the scam is as good as flogging a dead horse; and there is a possibility of those demanding it being charged with sedition, as well. The present union government is the government by the people, of the people, for the cronies, said Faizy