Swachh toilets scam in Madhya Pradesh: 4.5 lakh loos and Rs 540 cr used to build them vanish, says report

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More than 4.5 lakh toilets that were supposed to have been built from money handed out to beneficiaries in Madhya Pradesh between 2012 and 2018 are missing.

According to a Times of India report, the toilets were supposed to have been photographed and geo-tagged by the concerned authorities. These toilets were supposed to have been built after handing out Rs 540 crore to beneficiaries, but they exist only on paper.

The officials realised something was amiss when a few from Betul’s tribal Lakkadjam panchayat raised an alarm. Initial probes revealed that four of the beneficiaries mentioned in the report did not even know that toilets had been built in their name.

The report noted that on the government portal, one could see the fake beneficiaries posing in front of toilets. The report noted that officials, after carrying out an investigation, discovered that the photographs that were tabled as proof were often those of their neighbours' toilets.

Explaining how the scamsters might have pulled the feat, Ajit Tiwari, the Deputy Director of Swachh Bharat Mission (Rural) in Madhya Pradesh, said, “The GPS tag on Swachh toilets are precise up to six metres. So, what the crooks might have done is taken pictures of toilets in the vicinity and uploaded them in the name of new beneficiaries or put up pictures of toilets constructed before 2012.”