The Season For Scandal

LALOO Prasad Yadav is fond of telling television crews that he is the kingmaker. Not the man sitting on the throne, but the one behind it. To prove his role as the archetypal man with clout, the feisty Bihar chief minister has been spending more time in Delhi than in Patna. But in his own backyard, there is big trouble brewing. The fodder scam is just one in a long list of financial bungling and misappropriation cases that have grabbed headlines in the state. There is the bitumen scandal (Rs 100 crore); the housing scam (approximately Rs 400 crore); a massive racket in supply of medicines (about Rs 100 crore); and a state-patronised loot of forest resources (preliminary estimates: Rs 50 crore). And, these figures could well be erring on the side of caution.

The latest in this line is misappropriation of bitumen meant for road carpeting. By the state's own estimates, close to Rs 100 crore has been siphoned off in the last six years alone. The Bihar government buys one lakh metric tonnes of bitumen from the Haldia petro complex in West Bengal every year. State-maintained roads total 20,000 km while 218 km of National Highway runs through the state. At the annual stocktaking this year, complaints began pouring in from executive engineers from the 78 work divisions in Bihar that bitumen had not reached them, despite all entries having being made. One of the first complaints came this March from the engineer in charge of the Ganga bridge construction at north Bihar's Navgachia, who pointed out the irregularity to the accountant general's office.

Says Ilyas Hussain, Bihar's public works and transport minister: "We swung into action. Up to 25 FIRs have been filed." Hussain, a close Laloo aide, discounts any role in the scam, saying it is no more than a figment of the Opposition's imagination. But it will become difficult for the Laloo regime to wash its hands of the charges. Among them, some are quite blatant. Public Works Department (PWD) officials say the Bihar Government has no record or files on bitumen import for the last five years—which, incidentally, coincide with the scam period.

By the latest estimates, bitumen shortage has occurred in 16 works divisions, and the numbers are multiplying. The modus operandi is simple: on paper all the bitumen is shown to have been bought, while only 50 per cent is actually purchased and distributed.

And in south Bihar, a Rs 400-crore scandal is fast brewing. A preliminary state probe has revealed that several hundred acres of government land—meant exclusively for poor tribals—have been palmed off to group housing societies. According to the Chhotanagpur Tenancy Act that exists in south Bihar, land is classified under the revenue titles 'gair mazurua aam', 'gair mazurua khaas' and 'Khaasmahal'. None of them can be leased out for private use unless they are given to a voluntary agency.

A report by Special Secretary (Revenue) Ashok Vardhan identified nine district magistrates and 20 sub-divisional officers involved. Not just that, the cooperative housing societies are actually fronts for people accused in land grabbing cases. One society, in fact, was floated by a key accused in the animal husbandry scam. Says Bihar's Land Revenue Minister Inder Singh Namdhari: "In all these cases, (the conversion) was settled through the change of land records in the names of cooperatives and individuals, and the existence of this practice in the rest of the state cannot be ruled out." Though going back to the mid-'60s, the racket for illegal settlement seems to have gained currency after '93 when the Revenue Department actually proposed an amendment to the land transfer rules by suggesting that leasehold on land be abolished all together.

The move was reportedly backed by Laloo.

In a season of scams, all hell seems to be breaking loose in Laloo's Bihar. And by a coincidence, they all seem to take place in the tribal-dominated south. Tanvir Hasan, state legislative council member, says officials of the Bihar State Forest Development Corporation (BSFDC) and their counterparts in the Forest Department had embezzled funds to the tune of Rs 50 crore. State offi-cials say this was done in the purchase of karanj seeds (seed from which non-edible oil is extracted; botanical name BongamiaPinnata) and sale of tendu leaves (biological name Diopyros Montana), teak and mahogany timber.

Jabir Hussain, acting chairman of the legislative council, took up the matter for scrutiny and submitted his ruling this January. "In the absence of administrative alertness and departmental leadership," he wrote, a "tradition" of "misplacement" of relevant files has set in at the Forest and Environment Department.

Hussain said eight crucial files detailing the racket had not been given to him, but from what he saw, his verdict was emphatic. From available evidence, he "inferred" the following "facts"—the sale of karanj seeds worth Rs 68 lakh at a paltry Rs 82,000; the haste shown by the former BSFDC managing director in inviting tenders for the sale of tendu leaves before the desired period of their sale; the BSFDC personnel's move in showing a loss of Rs 4.5 crore in its 1993-94 budget under the pretext of improving productivity; and their regularities detected in the purchase of plastic bags and waiver of the godown rent". These "provide ample proof for filing criminal cases against the concerned officials", wrote Hussain. In August '95, Laloo had told the vigilance department that "for a month no action should be taken against forest officials".

Just when news of the bungle in the jungle was filtering out, out from the broom closet came the report of purchases in the state's notorious Health Department. In a case similar to the animal husbandry scam, audit officials in the accountant general's office have pointed out that over Rs 300 crore had been withdrawn "illegally" from the Health Department budget over the last decade. Again, medicine bought for supply to government hospitals never got there, the worst affected being TB hospitals which are on the point of closure in Bihar. In the Nalanda TB hospital alone, 3,000 cartons of medicine worth Rs 10.5 crore were found missing in 1995-96.

The modus operandi follows a pattern. Civil surgeons are allotted an annual amount for the purchase of medicines and they are expected to indicate their first preference to PSUs producing the required medicine. If they fail to deliver, the doctors are expected to buy from Central Government medical depots. Only if the depot too does not have the supplies are they expected to buy from the open market. In Bihar, as is wont, things have been happening the other way round. The civil surgeons have been approaching the open market first, at the same time indenting for purchases from the central depots. The central depot would send the supplies to the civil surgeon and forward the bills and receipts to the pay and account office at Calcutta. The latter would forward a copy of the bill and receipt to the office of the accountant general, Bihar, which would promptly transfer the value in books to the Central Government.

What, then, are the state vigilance agencies doing? "These are conservative sums, because agencies within the state just cannot get to the bottom of the probe. Central investigation is required," says leader of the Opposition Sushil Kumar Modi. But, according to the law of the land, any Central probe is possible only if the Laloo Yadav regime recommends it. The opposition, of course, hopes that in the absence of the state government's sanction for such investigations, the judiciary will step in.