Interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday said an inquiry was not initiated into the matter of gifts sent to Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia in 2016 as he did not accept the items and instead surrendered it to the Toshakhana.
Toshakhana maintains a record of all the gifts that government officials, including the prime minister, receive while they are on tour.
In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Goyal said Adhia had sent a letter dated November 4, 2016, to the Cabinet Secretariat informing it that certain gifts were sent to him which were “precious in nature” and could not be accepted by him as per Conduct Rules, PTI reported. He was the revenue secretary at the time.
Adhia had written that the items were delivered to his house in his absence and therefore, “he could not even refuse them”. “He had therefore requested Cabinet Secretary to ask Toshakhana of the Ministry of External Affairs to accept these items,” Goyal said in the reply.
The Toshakhana records show Adhia deposited an iPhone 7, two gold biscuits of 20 gm each and a silver coin of 50 gm, in total worth Rs 1,74,100 on November 8, 2016.
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