Flight Record
- Family members of the governor and CM made 39 non-official flight trips without paying any fare.
- 77 out-of-state flights without prior approval—to Delhi, Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Vijayawada, Guwahati, Lucknow, Moradabad, Bangalore, Mumbai and Calcutta.
- For 10 trips, helicopters hired in spite of a wet-lease chopper available with the government.
- Aircraft/choppers hired sometimes even for short distances, when cars could well have been used.
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Why didn’t the Assam governor, Syed Sibte Razi, who ‘retired’ in October, get an extension from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? It was generally believed that the corruption charges against his aide Rajesh Thakur (who was also Razi’s OSD during his earlier tenure as Jharkhand governor) had let to his downfall. But a special audit last month by the accountant-general (AG), Jharkhand, reveals the governor and the then CM Madhukar Koda are also guilty of gross misuse of government machinery. The PMO was aware of this, which is why Razi was asked to quit on moral grounds.
Records furnished by the state civil aviation department to the AG say about Rs 34.23 crore in expenses were incurred between April 2005-March 2008 on the personal travels of the governor, the chief minister and their families—the preferred mode of travel being chartered and government aircraft and helicopters. The AG’s report to the Jharkhand HC, which is looking into charges of corruption, found gross misuse on the part of the governor and CM’s families. They made 39 non-official ‘free’ trips, sometimes even chartering flights. This was just one of the charges detailed.
So how many crores did Razi and Koda really spend on private trips? The state civil aviation department strangely maintains only overall annual flight operational costs. Which is what the AG’s report states: “Since the department does not maintain flight-wise operational costs, the money value involved in unauthorised journeys could not be quantified.” In fact, whatever facts were unearthed by the AG were from incomplete government documentation. The report is also incomplete because “flights were undertaken to destinations not notified to the air traffic control (ATC)”. Similarly, the report notes that the “name of passengers mentioned in the passenger manifest submitted to the ATC differed from the passengers who actually travelled as per records of the civil aviation department”.
In fact, the AG’s report has put it on record that not all log books, vouchers of payment for chartered flights, copies of tour programmes and pilots’ records of which aircrafts were utilised for which trip have been furnished by the Jharkhand government.
Reacting to the report, former Orissa AG Jayant Das told Outlook: “The charges are very serious and authenticated as there were several rounds of screening. The Jharkhand accountant general’s report is beyond any doubt.” The clear subtext is that a wide ranging investigation into the activities of the then governor and chief minister is called for. In fact, the AG’s report notes as much: “Since there were serious irregularities in utilisation of government as well as chartered aircraft, further investigation by a specialised agency may kindly be considered.”
Rajiv Kumar, the lawyer in the PIL filed by Bindu Bhushan Dubey (on the basis of which the Jharkhand HC called for an audit), told Outlook, “This is about gross misuse of public funds. There were no checks. The audit is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many arbitrary decisions taken by the state machinery. It shows the attitude of our ruling class...their lack of responsibility towards the nation.”
