Hitting back at Rahul Gandhi for his charge that the CPI(M) had siphoned off central funds meant for the poor and downtrodden in West Bengal, the ruling party today said the Congress leader did not have any idea of the ground reality.
“It appears from Rahul Gandhi's allegation that he has a lack of sense of ground reality because there exists a monitoring mechanism on utilising central funds and also an auditing system,” CPI(M) Central Committee member Md Salim said.
Salim said every paisa of the central allocation was properly accounted for in the Utilisation Certificate. Besides, there exists a regular monitoring system.
“Otherwise, there would have been no sanction for the central funds in the last 33 years of Left Front rule... Utilisation of central funds is debated in the form of question-answer in Parliament and a general audit is done. CAG also keeps a watch," he said.
Salim's rebuttal came hours after Gandhi told a public rally here that UPA government was sending crores of rupees to the state under different schemes but the fund was being siphoned off and going to CPI(M) coffers for the last 33 years.
Salim claimed that central funds did not come from Congress coffers. The money reached the state government and not the CPI(M) as alleged by Gandhi.
He alleged the Congress had never “cared for the poor and the downtrodden, otherwise how did it engineer the move to raise prices of kerosene oil and essential commodities?”
State finance minister Asim Dasgupta also refuted Gandhi's allegation of central funds being “misused” by the government as “absolutely wrong”.
"We still have not received the entire central funds under NREGA," he claimed.
