RTI applicant pressured to withdraw plea

COIMBATORE: Authorities at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras were aware of the illegality in permitting retiring employees to switchover from the Contributory Provident Fund cum Gratuity Scheme (CPFG) to the lucrative General Provident Fund cum Family Pension Scheme (GPF) in recent years. While IIT Madras Director M S Ananth told the Union Ministry for Human Resource Development (MHRD) that the institute has sought legal opinion on the switchovers, it now emerges that there was a consistent attempt to cover up the scam.Documents provided to Express by privileged sources at IIT Madras reveal that last year the Director had personally asked Chennai resident K Swaminathan to withdraw an application filed under the Right To Information Act (RTI) seeking details about the illegal switchover to the pension scheme. The applicant, sources said, had actually sent his application to the MHRD in April last year. And MHRD Under Secretary Yatendra Kumar forwarded it to IIT Madras asking it to “furnish the information to the applicant.” Instead of doing so, Ananth is learnt to have summoned the applicant and asked him to withdraw the RTI application. Later, presumably on the instruction of the Director, officials at IIT Madras kept raising queries on whether the application was withdrawn and followed up its status periodically.In fact, in late August last year, the IIT Madras Registrar wrote to Swaminathan saying: “With reference to your RTI application seeking information on CPF, it may please be informed whether the RTI application addressed to MHRD has since been withdrawn.”Later in November that year, the Director himself in a handwritten note to Swaminathan requested, “Pl withdraw this RTI regarding pension and send a copy to Registrar.”There were cover up attempts earlier as well. During 2009-10, when auditors from the Office of the Principal Accountant General (Civil Audit), Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (PAG), belatedly unearthed the scam, IIT Madras went on a dodge mode and refused to cooperate with the auditors. In March last year, the PAG’s office forwarded to the MHRD a copy of its Inspection Report on the accounts of the IIT Madras for 2008-09. The report said: “In spite of repeated requests, the IIT-M did not furnish the Pension files/CPFG final authorisation files in respect of the following staff members. Hence, the amount of ineligible payment of CVP and pension in respect of these staff could not be arrived at in (the) Audit.”According to that report, IIT Madras had withheld information relating to eight employees, four of whom were professors. All of them had illegally switched over the pension scheme. Explaining its implications, a whistleblower said, “these documents prove that the PAG’s estimated loss of `5.47 crore caused by allowing 73 retiring staff to switchover to the GPF scheme is an extremely conservative figure confined to the five-year period between 2004 and 2009. If you were to take into account the amount paid to the employees whose records were suppressed as well as the switchovers during the last two decades, the loss to the government would be massive.”Tomorrow: Misinterpreting a clause and unanswered questions