‘Plea to take action on civic chief for relief fraud’

A writ plea has been made in the Madras High Court for a direction to the government to take action against P Panneerselvam, chairman of Panrutti Municipality, for swindling crores of rupees sanctioned for ‘Thane’ cyclone-affected families in Panrutti and surrounding areas.

The first bench comprising Chief Justice MY Eqbal and Justice TS Sivagnanam before which the public interest writ petition from K Mani of Pudu Nagar in Cuddalore district came up last week, ordered notice to the authorities concerned, returnable in two weeks.

According to petitioner’s counsel G Sankaran, the TN government allotted Rs 4.75 crore to provide relief to the families affected by the cyclone which hit the district on December 30 last year.

However, Panneerselvam and his men misappropriated the funds.

They created bogus documents, ration cards, forged the signatures of the recipients and in some cases impersonated the beneficiaries. Complete records had been created as if the entire amount of  Rs 4.75 crore had been expended towards Thane relief by exaggerating the number of houses and huts affected and by creation of records with forged signatures.  The money had not reached the genuine affected persons.

He had obtained information by using the Right to Information Act and was shocked to see that in some places, one single person affixed his signature for a number of beneficiaries. In some areas, consisting of educated persons, all the recipients ‘strangely’ affixed their thumb impressions.  Thereby, Panneerselvam and his men swindled crores of rupees, Sankaran contended, and prayed for appropriate action against them.