Chandigarh, May 24
Textbooks worth several lakhs for poor students remained dumped in a basement for years and paper meant to produce notebooks for school children remained unused since 1968. Yes, crores of rupees have been allegedly spent by a wing of the Punjab Education Department without any sort of audit in the past 14 years.

All these books and paper were found dumped in the basement of a building, located just 3 km from the seat of the Government. The incident occurred in the office of the State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT) located in Sector 17, here. The Science Education Council is also located in the same building. Both are wings of the Education Department. The SCERT had been using public money without a bother in the world. There has been no audit.

After stumbling upon this unprecedented happening, senior functionaries started an enquiry today. Two teams have been formed, said sources. One is to make an inventory of all records and assets of the SCERT and the second team comprising four Deputy Controllers of Finance will make an year-wise detail of all purchases, spending and unexplained entries in the record books.

Today the enquiry teams started working backwards from the current date to match the accounts and bring out the discrepancies. Sources said there are multiple errors. Cheques have been issued to people for lakhs of rupees without accounting for them or providing details of the money and why it has been given, said sources. The Principal Secretary, Education, Mr Sarvesh Kaushal, accompanied by a few officers had himself visited the spot yesterday after getting the disturbing feed-back from his subordinates.

The entire scam may run into crores but the details will be known only when the enquiry teams submit their reports. At present everything is hazy. Nobody knows the magnitude of the bungling and the matter may need a thorough probe. The SCERT conducts the Class V examination in the state and collects a couple of crores each year by way of examination fee from children. It is this money that has not been properly accounted for since 1992 when the Class V examination was introduced, said sources after the initial assessment carried out in the past 24 hours.

It may be mentioned that the office of the Accountant General, that is responsible for auditing the accounts, had sent reminders to the Education Department in the past asking why the accounts of the SCERT were not being screened. Also there was no alternative system of having a pre-audit that is normally conducted by the Examiner Local Fund Accounts working under the Finance Department. The Education Department is also trying to verify as to whom among their own functionaries could have stalled an audit of the accounts.