Nearly 40 Telangana government employees flagged for drawing double salaries

Nearly 40 Telangana government employees have been found drawing salaries from multiple establishments using the same Aadhaar number. The State government has ordered urgent inquiries, disciplinary action, recovery of funds, and criminal cases against those involved.

Hyderabad: Nearly 40 government employees have been identified as drawing salaries or remuneration from more than one government establishment in Telangana using the same Aadhaar number, embarrassing the State government and raising questions over its financial monitoring systems.

The irregularities came to light during verification of data in the Integrated Financial Management and Information System (IFMIS), where officials noticed duplicate Aadhaar mappings.

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Detailed scrutiny revealed instances where salary or remuneration was drawn from more than one government establishment against the same Aadhaar number.

In one case in the Revenue Department, salaries of two employees were drawn using the same Aadhaar number. In another case in the Public Health Department, two employees with different employee codes were found drawing salaries against the same Aadhaar number.

The State government has taken a serious view of the alleged fraudulent withdrawal of salaries or remuneration from multiple government establishments.

Depending on the facts of each case, such acts could attract disciplinary action under the applicable service rules and may also constitute criminal offences relating to cheating, impersonation, forgery, falsification of official records, criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of government funds.

Chief Secretary Sanjay Jaju, in a memo issued on Thursday, directed all Administrative Departments and Heads of Departments to immediately examine the cases communicated by the Finance Department.

They have been asked to conduct thorough inquiries on priority to determine whether employees had fraudulently drawn salaries or remuneration from more than one government establishment by suppressing facts, misrepresenting information or using other fraudulent means.

If such cases are established, officials have been directed to initiate disciplinary proceedings under the Telangana Civil Services (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1991, or other applicable service rules, for imposition of appropriate major penalties.

Officials have also been instructed to recover the entire amount of government money irregularly drawn, along with other recoveries admissible under the rules. They have been asked to lodge complaints with the competent law enforcement agencies for registration of criminal cases and prosecution wherever warranted.

Heads of Departments have also been directed to fix responsibility on officials whose negligence, omission or connivance facilitated the alleged fraudulent withdrawal and initiate appropriate action against them.

All departments have been asked to submit a comprehensive Action Taken Report (ATR) to the Finance Department within seven days. The report should include the status of verification, disciplinary proceedings, recovery of government money, registration of criminal cases and the stage of prosecution, wherever applicable.