Madrassa funding row: Now, DSEK says funds ‘surrendered’

By MUDASIR AHMED

Published: Wed, 12 December 2012 10:23 PM

SRINAGAR: The Directorate of School Education Kashmir (DSEK), which is under fire over alleged embezzlement of the funds it had received as New Delhi’s assistance for Valley madrassas, now says that a major chunk of those funds has been “surrendered.”
“The un-operated funds of 361.5176 lakhs rupees out of the total allotment of 553.45 lakhs was surrendered ‘as a routine’ at the end of the financial year 2011-12 and the remaining amount of 91.613 lakhs has been remitted by Chief Education officers to government treasuries,” DSEK says in an RTI application filed by Mudasir Naqashbandi and Firdous Ahmed Parray.

The lawyer duo had sought details about lapsed amount and utilisation of the funds by DSEK, the nodal agency for funds distribution, after DSEK reply to a previous RTI in April this year contradicted the total figure provided by the government on the floor of the House.
In the first RTI reply in March, the DSEK had said that it received “only 373.77 lakhs in central assistance for madrassas”. Following the April RTI, DSEK said that it received 553.45 lakhs out of which 100.3194 were disbursed by CEOs to various madrassas.
But, government in a written reply to MLA Langate Er Rashid’s query in the House disclosed that it received Rs seven crores in central assistance for the madrassas in the Valley, out of which only 100.1394 lakh were disbursed.
“The information they have given now on the quantum amount is still ambiguous despite the request for a clarified reply about the declaration of the lapsed amount,” Mudasir Naqashbandi told Kashmir Reader. “Although DSEK has maintained that it received 553.45 lakhs from government of India, the latest RTI raises more questions than it answers.”
In the RTI reply in March, Naqashbandi says, DSEK claims to have disbursed the amount after March 31. “However, in the new RTI application they have said that funds get automatically lapsed after March 31. But in the previous RTI, DSEK said that it disbursed funds to madrassas in Budgam in the month of April this year.  So did they disburse the amount in April in Budgam if the amount got lapsed in March?”
Also, Naqashbandi says, list of all the madrassas who have received the aid “is with us, and they are not 372, as shown in the new RTI by DSEK, but only a handful.”
“I believe the information they have provided is totally misleading and incomplete. We are mulling to take necessary course of action in order to get to the facts,” Naqashbandi added