Keonjhar: The district administration in Keonjhar has issued termination letters for 29 employees who were drawing salaries with the funds available under the District Mineral Foundation (DMF) scheme.
The affected personnel include 22 junior project engineers (JPEs) and seven assistant project engineers (APEs), who were appointed across various blocks in the district.
Acting on the District Collector’s directive, the Zilla Parishad office in Keonjhar issued a letter (no. 4308; dt July 18, 2025) instructing the outsourcing agency to discontinue the services of these staffers.
This move follows a series of allegations and ongoing legal proceedings in the Orissa High Court regarding irregularities, fund misappropriation, and misuse of DMF grants in Keonjhar. Despite repeated complaints and the lapse of several months, the state-level committee had failed to submit its report to the court, prompting the petitioner to file a second petition in the court.
Also Read: School projects on forest land draw NGT scrutiny
Sources allege that funds worth crores from the DMF fund were arbitrarily spent by engaging employees in various departments, violating Section 11(A)(5) of the Odisha DMF Rules, 2015. Moreover, instead of directly transferring salary grants to the outsourcing agency, the funds were routed through the Project Director or CDO, Zilla Parishad of the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), Keonjhar.
The state Chief Secretary had issued an order September 10, 2019 where in point no-5 (A) it was explicitly instructed that wages for project-specifi c outsourced personnel should be paid from the project contingency fund. However, the directive was bypassed, and large sums were spent directly from the DMF fund.
In this situation, the timeline for terminating those employees appointed in other departments remains uncertain. Furthermore, although various departments received DMF funds for contingency use, many have failed to return the unspent amounts or provide clear account statements.
Concerns have also been raised about illegal appointments across departments, lack of income and expenditure records, and the absence of dedicated cashbooks for DMF-linked activities. A serious allegation was made May 20, 2025, that different departments had opened multiple bank accounts under the DMF project title without authorisation.
Following a directive from the Union Ministry of Mines, the State Planning and Convergence Department had sent a letter (no-8569/18, dt June 20, 2025) to the Keonjhar Collector, requesting a detailed report on the issue.
PNN
