Govt questioned on diversion of aid funds: The Church of England Newspaper, Nov 19, 2010 p 6.

Lord Harries

The former Bishop of Oxford has called upon the government to explain the misappropriation of £94 million pounds of British development funds by Indian government officials.

On Nov 9, Lord Harries asked the government’s “assessment of the assurance given by the Government of India that special funds for the support of Dalits and other scheduled castes were not used to finance the Commonwealth Games?”

Lord Howell, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, told the House of Lords the government had been “monitoring this situation carefully.”

He noted that “following earlier reassurances from Delhi that the Commonwealth Games were self-funding, the Indian Home Minister has subsequently acknowledged that some moneys earmarked for Dalits and scheduled castes were in fact used to contribute to Commonwealth Games infrastructure projects and that, in his view, this was both wrong and inconsistent with Indian Planning Commission guidelines.”

The minister said he understood the Indian government was seeking to rectify the situation and were “seeking to find ways of returning the sums involved.”

Lord Harries thanked the minister for his reply, for having informed the House of the diversion of funds and that the “assurance previously given by the Indian government was in fact unfounded.”

The bishop pressed the government to state what mechanisms it would employ to prevent further abuses, and would it investigate cases of a “similar diversion of funds [that] has taken place in a range of states?”

The minister said he had no knowledge of any other cases of fraud, but would “look into them.”

However the minister added that in India the “sum diverted was £94 million. We are monitoring the situation very closely, and the British high commissioner is in discussion with the Indian National Commission for Minorities about these and other issues,” Lord Howell said.