National Cooperative Union of India- the apex cooperative body in the country has strongly condemned unfounded media-bashing in the wake of Audit report which accused NCCT and NCUI of flouting norms in managing the corpus fund of Rs 340 crore.
We are considering referring the report to the Institute of Chartered Accountants – as a case of poor work not behoving a trained Chartered Accountant, said Mr N Satyanarayan, Executive Director (Finance) at NCUI and an accomplished CA himself.
Readers would recall that last week based on an audit report by chartered accountants firm Gupta Verma & Sethi, the report signed by CA Krishan Sethi.
Laughing off the issue that the government is considering action against the national council for cooperative training (NCCT) management Dr Dinesh said” “Once we put our side of the story all doubts in the mind of Ministry officials would disappear.” Both NCUI Chief Executive Dr Dinesh and ED Satyanarayan said the Central Registrar knows every detail of how the fund-has been used.
But where is the violation of the guidelines? wondered Satyanarayan. He showed the detailed guidelines quoted by the Auditor arbitrarily to put NCUI-NCCT in the dock. Section(a) of the guidelines number 6 reads” Investment in the fixed deposits of nationalized banks, cooperative banks including scheduled multi state urban cooperative banks, Central govt securities, post office deposits, RBI/NABARD Bonds, Infrastructure Bond etc. “
It is obvious the argument of auditors that the fund could be parked only in FDs of PSU banks is not true, said the ED Finance.
If not the NCUI then who else will be custodian of the Corpus Fund, asked the ED showing supporting papers which read “ a separate bank account in the name of Corpus Fund for Cooperative Training shall be opened by the NCUI.”
Readers would note that a fund of Rs 200 crore was created during the 10th plan period on equal contributions of Rs 100 crore each by the NCUI and the govt of India. The Fund would be managed by a committee known as the “Fund Management Committee”.
The Committee shall comprise of President NCUI as Chairman , Chief Executive NCUI, Central Registrar and Director Finance, Ministry of Agriculture, as members and the NCCT secretary shall be member secretary of the committee. The Central govt may nominate two members as it deems appropriate.
The guidelines also read that a portion of interest earnings/accruals on this Fund may be transferred to NCCT as decided by the Committee and NCCT has to maintain a separate account as it also receives grant from the govt for its training needs.
Referring to the corpus fund of Rs 5.8 crore created in the name of Jawahar Lal Cooperative Institute Satyanarayana said the original fund was just Rs 3 crore and after interest calculations it has become Rs 5.8 crore- no body has taken a single rupee from it and the money has been deposited in FDs.
We know the details can vouch for it but such news-items as are vacuous in nature have enormous nuisance value and damage the reputation of the organization, lamented Mr Satyanarayanan.