Imphal, December 01: The State Revenue Department has been incurring a loss of Rs 1.49 crores revenue during the last 10 years as the Planning and Development Authority (PDA) does not use the mandatory stamp papers while issuing housing loans to the Government employees, disclosed a reliable source from the Revenue Department.

According to the source, using of stamp papers for writting the agreement at the time of granting loan is mandatory, but the PDA did not use any stamp papers and the agreement is written on simple plain papers.

This is despite the fact that 3 percent of the loan amount is charged from the beneficiaries for signing the agreement on a stamp paper, the source disclosed If the stamp papers were used, 3 percent of the loan amount charged from the beneficiaries should have accrued as revenue to the State Government, the source said.

Suffering great loss on this account, the State Revenue Department has decided to take the matter to the knowledge of the Chief Minister who also holds the Finance portfolio so that necessary action can be taken up to ensure that stamp papers are used and rules are followed strictly, the source informed.

How and where the 3 percent of the loan amount charged by PDA is utilised is not known, added the source.

The source further disclosed that PDA had borrowed Rs 4984.49 lakhs from Housing and Urban Development Cooperative Ltd for giving housing loan to the employees.

PDA has granted housing loan to the employees till the 12-phase under its Cash Loan Housing Scheme, but has fail to do so for the selected loanees for the 13th and 14th phase although loan cards have been issued to the beneficiaries.

The implementation of the scheme come to a stand still as PDA could not return the loan borrowed from HUDCO in time since 1998.As a consequence, HUDCO too has stopped giving any more capital loan to PDA, the source said.

State Government employees are divided into four groups, namely Economic Weaker Section (EWS), Lower Income Group (LIG), Medium Income Group (MIG) and Higher Income Group (HIG) and housing loan are issued to the employees accordingly since 1991.The source also blamed the State Finance Department partially for failure of the scheme.

Although the loan amount is recovered from the monthly salaries of the loanee employees, the money borrowed from HUDCO could not be returned as the State Finance Department did not release the required money in time.

Besides, the loan taken HUDCO in connection with the 5th National Games held at Imphal too has not been returned so far.

The loan amount include Rs 30 crores for Urban Infrastructure (UI), and another Rs 80 crores for development of National Games village.

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