Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren told the Assembly on Monday that the process to fill up vacancies in different boards, commissions and corporations of the state was underway. With the leader of opposition yet to get appointed in the House, the exercise to fill up these vacancies got delayed, Soren stated. “The process of filling up these posts has been delayed due to several reasons, including non-appointment of the leader of opposition in the House. However, we are working on it and it will be done soon," Soren said during the Question Hour. He was replying to a query posed by BJP legislator Biranchi Narayan. Narayan, during the session, said that people of Jharkhand were facing problems, with their complaints piling up, as several constitutional and statutory institutions and quasi-judicial bodies had been not been functioning.
More than 20,000 complaints are pending in the absence of a state information commissioner for over two years, he said. Similar is the situation in state human rights commission, Lokayukta, Jharkhand state electricity regulatory commission and the women’s commission, the MLA pointed out. The BJP, which is the main opposition party in the 81-member House, had been demanding that Babulal Marandi, a former CM who merged his JVM(P) with the BJP in 2020, be accorded the status of leader of opposition in the Assembly. However, the speaker’s nod on the matter is still awaited. Marandi was on February 24, 2020 unanimously elected as leader of the BJP Legislative Party.
During the day, Congress legislator from Barkagaon, Amba Prasad, raised the issue of displacement of locals in coal mining areas. She demanded that a displacement commission be set up at the earliest for providing benefits of Land Acquisition Act 2013 to those eligible for it. On MLA Bandhu Tirkey’s question about filling up vacant posts in the reserved category, the chief minister said it was a complex subject but his government would try to sort it out. "We will assess the status of backlogs in different departments and steps will be taken accordingly," he said. In response to BJP MLA Narayan Das’s demand for a divisional bench of Jharkhand High Court in state’s second capital Dumka, Soren said that he had written to the chief justice in this regard. Jamshedpur East MLA Saryu Roy, on his part, alleged that no FIR was registered by the anti-corruption bureau in Meinhardt corruption case due to "non-receipt of order from competent authority". Soren had in November 2020 ordered an inquiry by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on allegation of irregularities in the appointment of Singapore based Meinhardt as a consultant for the drainage and sewerage project of Ranchi in 2005. Former chief minister Raghubar Das was then the urban development minister. Parliamentary affairs minister Alamgir Alam said an investigation into the matter was going on. "ACB has received the answers of two people so far after issuing show-cause notices. We will ensure that other accused in the case file their replies in the next two months," Alam added.
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