Chandigarh: The officials of PWD department are under the scanner of government for their involvement in scandal of ‘illegal verification’ of advertisement bills. The state government has ordered an inquiry in this scandal after noticing that bills worth lakhs with ‘forged signatures and stamping’ have been presented to state’s treasury for payment in the past few months.
According to the source, the Principal Secretary(PWD) was informed by Department of Public relations about the matter of illegal verification of bills by PWD department. It was revealed that not only the signatures were forged even fake stamps been used to verify bills. The senior PRO said this has caused huge loss to the exchequer and a detailed investigation is required to come out with all the people involved in this matter. The matter of illegal verification of bills came to light after three falsely verified bills were submitted to treasury were cross verified by joint Director, source said. The Principal Secretary of PWD Hussan Lal has ordered a probe to thoroughly investigate the advertisement bills and also ordered to examine whether the rates on these bills were according to the rates approved by DPR (Department of Public Relations) and whether these been released through the DPR empanelled agencies or not.