THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Leaving the Education Minister in the dark and dumping the decorum of departmental beats, the Chief Minister has ordered a Vigilance inquiry into the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) project in the state.The inquiry follows a complaint given by pro-Congress organisation Government School Teachers Union (GSTU) which raised serious allegations on the fund-spending mode of SSA and the lack of transparency in its dealings during the past five years.While the Chief Minister is learnt to have given the go-ahead to the Vigilance for an inquiry two days ago, probably because he holds the portfolio, the Education Minister was in the dark about it when Express contacted him on Saturday. “I have not issued any order. No such inquiry has come to my knowledge,” Education Minister P K Abdu Rabb said. Meanwhile, sources said that the inquiry had been ordered to look into the spending of SSA in the past five years, role of pro-Left organisations in gaining many components in the SSA such as printing of books, implementation of projects such as ‘Ente Maram’ and the real nature of the umpteen foreign and national tours taken by SSA top officials including the London tour by a group from Kollam last year.According to the complaint given by GSTU, the child census carried out by the SSA in 2007 was not part of its agenda. But more than Rs 1.25 crore was spent on the census, using the help of Kudumbashree for enumeration.The project had ended up half-baked and a liability for the state SSA. The complaint says that the free distribution of books to students was using the fund of SSA but all the while the State Government had trumpeted that it was distributing books for free. The funds were finally reimbursed from the SSA coffers.
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