Two more Telangana officials held in sheep distribution scam

Hyderabad, May 31 (IANS) Telangana's Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Friday arrested two more officials, including a former aide of former Animal Husbandry Minister T. Srinivas Yadav and a senior official for their alleged involvement in irregularities in sheep distribution, a flagship scheme by the previous BRS government. 

Those arrested have been identified as Sabavath Ramchander, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Telangana livestock Development Agency, formerly MD, TSSGDCF (Telangana State Sheep and Goat Development Cooperative Federation Ltd) and Gundamaraju Kalyan Kumar, former OSD for the then Minister for Animal Husbandry, Dairy Development, Fisheries and Cinematography.

The ACB alleged that they colluded and conspired with private persons, resorted to gross illegal acts and violations in the course of discharge of their duties.

According to the agency, they violated instructions issued for procurement of sheep and deliberately involved private persons/brokers in the procurement process.

Both deliberately gave instructions to all district Joint Directors/DVAHOs of the Animal Husbandry Department to facilitate misappropriation of government money by private persons.

The accused, along with private persons, illegally obtained undue advantage, and caused wrongful loss to the government exchequer, and thus misappropriated government funds worth Rs 2.10 crore.

With this, the number of accused arrested in the case has gone up to 10.

In February, the ACB had arrested four officials.

The ACB launched an investigation in January into the sheep distribution scheme following allegations that some beneficiaries were cheated.

A case was registered in December 2023 after some people filed complaints against the officials and middlemen, including two assistant directors of the animal husbandry department and two contractors.

The Sheep Rearing Development Scheme (SRDS) was launched by the state government in April 2017 to provide sustainable livelihoods to traditional shepherd families and improve their economic standard.

Under the first phase, each family was given 20 sheep with a unit cost of Rs 1.25 lakh on a 75 per cent subsidy. A total expenditure of Rs 4,980.31 crore was incurred for the implementation of the scheme.

About 82.74 lakh sheep were procured from other States and distributed among 3.92 lakh members of the Primary Sheep Breeders Co-operative Societies (PSBCS).

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), in its report presented to the state Assembly in February, hinted at massive irregularities in the implementation of the scheme.

CAG report on general, social and economic sectors of Telangana for the year ended March 2021 suspects fraud in the implementation of the scheme.

During the test-check of the implementation of the scheme in seven districts, the audit observed serious deficiencies like non-maintenance of beneficiary-wise files, non-availability of invoices in support of transportation of sheep; payments made on improper/ manipulated invoices, invoices containing fake vehicle registration numbers and invoices showing transportation of higher number of sheep units than that was possible/permitted.

In one instance, it found that a two-wheeler was used to transport as many as 126 sheep in a single trip.

Two-wheelers, cars/vans, buses and even ambulances were claimed to have been used to transport sheep.

Not just passenger vehicles, even fire trucks, water tankers and mobile compressor vehicles were shown as used for the transportation of sheep.

--IANS

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