The recently appointed Goa Lokayukta Justice P.K.Misra has fixed on 16th June the preliminary hearing on the complaint that was filed on April 3rd 2013 against the then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and Dattaprasad Kholkar the Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Board who is also the State BJP Vice-President.
In the complaint filed under section 11 of the Goa Lokayukta Act, Manohar Parrikar and Dattaprasad Kholkar have been accused of misusing their offices to high-handedly, illegally and fraudulently appoint Diksha Pednekar as peon in the office of the Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Board.
Though Diksha Pednekar was appointed on 6th June 2012 as peon in the office of the Deputy Chairman of the Goa State Planning Board, she never worked in that position or for that matter never entered the Secretariat at Porvorim where is housed the office of the Deputy Chairman of the Goa State Planning Board and where she was supposed to work.
The work of Diksha Pednekar as peon in the office of the Deputy Chairman of the Goa Planning Board was infact being carried out by her husband Dhananjay Pednekar who is a Panchayat member of ward No 1 of Pomburpa-Olaulim Panchayat, while, Diksha Pednekar was working as a maid in the house of an architect Indrajit Chatterji at Muddi Vaddo in Olaulim, Pomburpa.
As the Goa Panchayat Act does not allow a panch member to work for the government, fraudulently the official papers show Diksha Pednekar as the peon while de-facto the peon’s work was being discharged by her husband Dhananjay Pednekar.
The whole appointment of Diksha Pednekar smacked not only of nepotism, corruption and favoritism, but also forgery being committed by falsifying records with the active connivance of Manohar Parrikar and Dattaprasad Kholkar. Infact Manohar Parrikar and Dattaprasad Kholkar committed ‘criminal misconduct’, by abusing their position as public servants to obtain the illegal employment for Diksha Pednekar in public service, at the cost of State’s exchequer.
Manohar Parrikar and Dattaprasad Kholkar are liable to be prosecuted for offences under sections 13(d) (i), section 13(d) (ii) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 punishable under section 13(2) of the said Act, as well as section 193 (for fabricating false evidence), section 420 (cheating the State exchequer, thereby causing loss to the State treasury) and section 468 (forgery for the purposes of cheating)
It has been sought that an F.I.R be registered against Manohar Parrikar, Dattaprasad Kholkar and other officials who were party to this illegality and that after investigating the complaint that they be prosecuted in accordance with law.
