Vadodara: They feel fortunate chosen to get a home when their names are taken in lucky government lotteries.
But luck runs even before they can be allocated houses under the Pradhan Mantri Beware of YOJNA (PMAY).
Scam massively excavated at Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC), allegedly assigned by two staff, has revealed that the name 382 beneficiaries of PMAY have been replaced by other people.
Duo – Pramod Vasava, an executive engineer and Nishith Pithva, a software expert – accused of defending the names of beneficiaries and uploading a list of fraud on the Civic body website.
Beneficiaries were selected in a computer draw held on August 7 as part of the five-year settlement of the Government Vijay Kupani.
Draw was done to distribute 382 housing units at the event held at Sir Ijirao Nagarge.
Based on complaints submitted by Shailesh Mistry City engineers, violations of criminal violations of trust by civil servants and counterfeiting were submitted at the Navapura police station, and the police took the duo to be questioned.
However, the investigation was handed over to the detection of Crime Branch (DCB) on Thursday night, seeing the seriousness of fraud.
Fraud was revealed when the beneficiaries, allocated houses carried out by Minister Yogesh Patel found that their names were lost from the list on the website.
When Pithva was requested by one of the anomalies in the names chosen during the event and list of events, he spilled beans.
Pithva gave a written statement that he was asked by Vasava not to publish the list of selected beneficiaries if the names distributed by him on the cellphone were not selected.
Pithwa was asked to run a computer drawing program again and set up a new list.
Pithwa said that he did it as told and Vasava, who was in an affordable department of housing, certified a new list which was then uploaded on the website.
VMC officials also became suspicious because the list was not inserted at the house specified according to the procedure and immediately uploaded on the website.
In his complaint to the police, Mistry stated that in addition to Pithva’s statement, the difference was also highlighted by comparing the list of fraud with the original prepared immediately after the draw at the event.
The video recording of the event also revealed the difference.
When Vasava was asked by the media of people on Thursday about fraud, he denied the allegations and said that Mistry was responsible for the event, while Pithva said that he only did whatever he was told by his superiors.