‘Study tour’: Experts say House decision ‘big joke’, councillors have to face the music

Sanjay Kaushal, Chandigarh’s former senior standing counsel in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, said that the general house could not, under any Act, absolve its members of their wrongdoing. In matters of financial irregularities, the members would have to face consequences.

A lot had been written about lapses in the ‘study tour’, the administration must intervene and take appropriate action, Kaushal said.
Another city-based lawyer Ajay Jagga said that no one had the power to bury any kind of financial irregularity and Tuesday’s decision by the corporation’s general house was “a big joke’’.

If any loss or wastage of finances of the municipal corporation was noted, then first of all it had to be officially recorded as to who were responsible and then it had to be dealt with under the relevant provisions of the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, 1976, as applicable to Chandigarh, including Section 416 that dealt with the liability of councillors in case of financial irregularities, Jagga said.

All eyes are now on the status of the letter sent by Mayor H C Kalyan to the Adviser to Administrator Vijay Dev on Monday, demanding an investigation to fix responsibility for the allotment of contract for the ‘study tour’ to a travel agency, owned by relatives of the Leader of Opposition Arun Sood, without following proper procedure.

Reached on the phone, Vijay Dev, who is currently on leave, said that he would study the issue after joining office on January 6.

As many 19 councillors, six officials and 13 family members of the councillors had visited Chennai, Port Blair and Kolkata from August 31 to September 9, ostensibly to study development projects. They also visited places like Tirupati and Havelock Island which were not part of the itinerary sanctioned by the UT Administrator. The corporation spent Rs 27.8 lakh on the tour.

In the House meet, the members had also condemned the move to recover the expenses which were not in conformity with objectives of the study tour.