The role of few top cops in Madhya Pradesh police has come under the scanner following allegations of misuse of authority and financial bungling in a survey for traffic management conducted in total violation of its mandate by Madhya Pradesh Computerisation of Police Society (MPCOPS).
On being contacted, state home minister Umashankar Gupta told this newspaper that he is already aware of the charges and has asked the state home department to “examine the matter”.
The charter of MPCOPS, which is supervised by the state director general of police, is restricted to implementing the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), which is a mission mode project under the national e-governance plan of Government of India.
When contacted, director general of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) N.K. Tripathi confirmed that MPCOPS was established exclusively to implement CCTNS. He categorically pointed out that no money has been routed to MPCOPS by his organisation for conducting a traffic survey.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) had approved CCTNS Project in June 2009.
Subsequently societies were registered in different states with top police officials forming the executive committee to implement the CCTNS project in the mission mode. Keeping in view this water-tight mandate, the Madhya Pradesh Police Training and Research Institute (PTRI) should have been the authorised agency to conduct the traffic survey with funds made available by the Government of India specifically to meet this objective, a highly placed source in police headquarters here said, adding MPCOPS was “wrongly” chosen to conduct the survey and allowed to spend an amount of `5 crores (`4 crores received from the Government of India and `1 crore from the state government) for this purpose.
Inquiries have revealed that the laid down procedure was not followed in finalising the tender floated by MPCOPS for the traffic survey.
Questions are also being raised on the procedure adopted for selecting a New Delhi-based organisation, which was only having the “experience of promoting transport through a scientific management system of licensing of cycle rickshaws and auto rickshaws”.
It is also alleged that the utilisation certificate for the entire amount of `5 crores spent on this survey was submitted without conducting any audit for financial or procedural compliance, which is a mandatory requirement under the audit memo.
It is learnt that Purshottam Sharma, who was earlier inspector general of police (state Crime Records Bureau), was given the marching orders recently after the irregularities in conducting the traffic related survey came to the notice of the political executive.