Former Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) secretary V.S. Jayakumar has been found to be guilty of the charges levelled against him by the board.
Former Vigilance Tribunal Cherunniyoor P. Sasidharan Nair probed eight charges against Mr. Jayakumar and in his report submitted on Friday said that seven of them had been found to be true.
Mr. Jayakumar, while officiating as Sabarimala executive officer and Devaswom secretary in due course, was accused of committing eight irregularities and out of that seven charges had been found to be true, the report said.
Purchase of utensils
One of the charges was about the purchase of utensils in Sabarimala for ₹1.87 crore. The inquiry had detected graft in the purchase.
The inquiry found that fake bills were furnished when a large number of utensils were remaining unused. This was found to have incurred a huge loss to the board.
The charges that documents were not furnished to the auditors in time and files related to the graft were destroyed had also been found to be true, the report said.
Payments to contractors
Procedural violations were found in payments made to contractors.
The report also said that Mr. Jayakumar had secured the commissioner’s post in violation of rules and it was quashed by the High Court subsequently.
The report was submitted after collecting evidence and hearing arguments from May 30, 2019 to March 4, 2020.
An additional report comprising recommendations for containing graft and ineptness of board officials had also been submitted to the board. It also had recommendations for strengthening the audit mechanism as well as the vigilance and security wing of the board.
