MUMBAI, 19 August 2007 — The Bombay High Court verdict delivered two days ago against Animal Husbandry, Dairy Development and Waqf Minister Anees Ahmed has come as a timely boon to Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who considered it as an opportunity to settle political scores with his defiant minister.
Minutes after the court delivered the verdict and rapped Ahmed for illegally extending a toll collection contract which resulted in heavy financial losses to the state exchequer, a jubilant Deshmukh lost no time in communicating the court verdict to Congress President Sonia Gandhi and the Congress High Command in New Delhi and demanding the immediate dismissal of Ahmed.
With the Congress High Command giving a go-ahead clearance to Deshmukh for a Cabinet reshuffle by August-end, it appears certain that the chief minister would make things more difficult for a besieged Ahmed.
Several Muslim leaders thronged the chief minister after the verdict by the court, anticipating a Cabinet post for them in lieu of Ahmed, and some Muslim leaders flew to New Delhi on Friday evening to meet Congress leaders and lobby for a Cabinet berth in the reshuffle.
A senior Congress leader told Arab News in the chief minister’s chamber in the secretariat that Sonia has been briefed about the way Ahmed had humiliated and insulted Deshmukh on the Waqf Board issue in the recently concluded monsoon session of the state legislative assembly, and that too in front of the opposition parties. The Bombay High Court verdict is more than enough for sacking Ahmed from the ministerial post, the Congress leader said.
According to late afternoon report from New Delhi, several Muslim leaders from Maharashtra have met All India Congress Party (AICC) leaders Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vohra, Shivraj Patil, Digvijay Singh, Margaret Alva and Sushil Kumar Shinde, lobbying for a Cabinet berth.
A senior Congress minister said that Anees Ahmed was snobbish, arrogant and rude to everyone, even to his own Muslim community people. There is no place of uncivilized and arrogant people either in the society or in the government, the minister said.
Ahmed who is out of Mumbai, said that he has not seen the court verdict and will comment after reaching Mumbai and reading the judgment.
Meanwhile, following the court orders, Chief Secretary Johny Joseph held a meeting of senior officials to ascertain the revenue loss caused by Ahmed. Officials said, "All of Ahmed's wrongs will be probed. Senior secretary Leena Mehndale was forced to seek transfer out of dairy development as she could not get along with Ahmed."
A senior secretary in CMO said, "With Ahmed openly waging a war against CM over Waqf Board last month, nobody in the administration is willing to bail out Ahmed. To make matters worse, nobody in the government is in a position to challenge the court decision."
Ahmed's inefficiency of handling his own departments has invited adverse remarks from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India in its report of 2005-06. The report stated: "Internal control is a process designed to provide reasonable assurance to an organization regarding the achievement of economy and efficiency of operations including performance goals."
The report further stated: "A built-in internal control system and adherence to codes and manuals minimize the risk of errors and irregularities and help to protect resources against loss due to waste, abuse and mismanagement. An evaluation of internal controls in the Animal Husbandry Department during the period 2001-2006 disclosed weaknesses in internal controls such as noncompliance with the financial codes; nonassessment of grants released to the district councils; inadequate monitoring of schemes implemented by the department and ineffective internal audit arrangements."
As relating to the major audit findings, the report stated that there were large savings under Plan Schemes and persistent excess expenditure under Non-Plan Schemes, assessment of the grants released to the district councils was not made and excess grants of Rs 94.5 million were paid to 21 councils.
Out of Rs 614.4 million due for recovery from poultry co-operative societies only Rs 3.7 million had been recovered during 2001-06, Sero-monitoring of the vaccinated animals essential to assess and verify the efficacy of the vaccination program and also the quality of the vaccines was not planned and carried out.
There were large numbers of vacancies in the supervisory cadre affecting the proper monitoring of the schemes and staff strength of the Internal Audit Wing of the department was inadequate. Only 13 percent of units were audited during 2005-06. A total of 11,415 internal audit paras were pending settlement as of March 2005, the report concluded.
