PDOs, village accountants involved in housing fraud: Somanna

Bengaluru: In the wake of frauds happening in rural housing schemes, the state government is contemplating merging different housing schemes to stop people and officials from unscrupulously withdrawing money from multiple schemes.

Speaking to reporters here on Wednesday, Housing Minister Mr V Somanna said that during his review, he had unearthed a fraud where money was being withdrawn from multiple schemes for the same house allotted by the government! “We have realised that the panchayat presidents, PDOs and village accountants are involved in this fraud. They  destroyed the GPS and for the same house, they withdrew money from different schemes like Dr BR Ambedkar Housing Scheme, Basava Housing Scheme, D Devaraj Urs Housing Scheme and Vajpayee Housing Scheme. The government is contemplating merging all these housing schemes, except Ambedkar Housing Scheme under one name to control such financial mismanagement,'' he said.

The entire housing scheme process is now being handled by the respective panchayats, though the legislators get the schemes sanctioned. Since there is no one to supervise the process, large scale irregularities are being reported. The government will ask the tahsildars of the respective taluks to take stock of the housing schemes and even zilla panchayat CEOs will be asked to monitor the process. Besides, the government has introduced an App, through which all the housing schemes would be monitored, he added.