Village panchayat secretary held for taking Rs 10K bribe

A village panchayat secretary was today arrested for allegedly accepting abribeof Rs 10,000 in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon district, Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) officials said.
N Prasad Sharma, secretary of Murai village panchayat under Chhuikhadan development block was caught red-handed while accepting thebribefrom the complainant Dev Kumar Tiwari for geo-tagging process of a under-construction house under 'Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna', an ACB official here said.
Tiwari's mother, a beneficiary of PM housing scheme, was constructing the house under it, he said.
A total subsidy of Rs 1.48 lakh was sanctioned to the woman under the scheme by the government and she had received the first instalment of the subsidy of Rs 48,000, he said.

Generally after construction of houses is completed upto the plinth level, geo-tagging process is done to track progress of construction works through geo-tagged photographs following which remaining two instalments are paid to beneficiaries, he said.
Local panchayat secretary had to submit the photographs of the under-construction house along with the Aadhaar card of the beneficiary to Panchayat office.

For the purpose when the complainant contacted Sharma, he demanded a bribe of Rs 20,000, he said.
Meanwhile, the victim lodged a complaint to ACB in this connection following which a trap was laid at Sharma's rented house in Chhuikhadan where he had called up the complainant along with the first instalment of bribe amount.

As the accused received thebribeamount of Rs 10,000, he was apprehended, the official said.
A case under various sections of Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 has been registered, he said, adding a probe was on.