Chandigarh, September 19
The cash strapped Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) spent Rs 30 lakh to facilitate its officials and members watch international cricket matches at the Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) stadium, Mohali.
The board booked a corporate box at the stadium in 2005 for three years for Rs 10 lakh. Last year, the booking was renewed for another three years at the cost of Rs 20 lakh. The corporate box, with a capacity of 24 seats was used by PSEB officials and their guests to watch international cricket matches free of cost.
Interestingly the expenditure borne by the board was approved by the members to ensure that players of the PSEB or officers connected with sports or employees of the Board reach the PCA Stadium in time and see the match without interruption; as that would help them in learning cricketing skills from world-class players.
“This luxury indulged in by the PSEB was paid by the state’s electricity consumers, said Punjab and Haryana High Court advocate HC Arora, who gathered this information under the Right to Information
Act.
For the board, which is almost in the red, saddled with subsidies worth crores, such expenditure is nothing short of a crime. In fact, anks have refused to give loans to the board considering its poor fiscal management. Recently, the UCO Bank refused to transfer a loan of Rs 575 crore to the board. The Bank of Maharasthra too is reported to have refused a Rs 200 crore loan to the board.
The fact that almost no thought went into this unwanted expenditure is clear from the extreme hurry shown by the board to book the one of the best (and most expensive) locations in the stadium to watch the India vs Pakistan test match in March 2005.
In 2005, a discount offering lease of the normal corporate box for Rs 10 lakh, instead of Rs 15 lakh, was offered to the board by PCA. The board chairman ordered the booking the very next day and put the matter before board members for ex-post facto approval. In October again, PCA offered the chairman a 40-seater corporate box for Rs 20 lakh, a proposal that was “urgently processed and issued” by the board chairman.
