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MLAs lose fund, officer loses property as Nitish fights corruption…….Santosh Singh
A fornight into his overwhelming victory, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s regime is ushering in the change he promised. In two significant achievements in the battle against corruption, the state last week decided in principle to scrap the Rs 1 crore Local Area Development Fund allotted to MLAs and MLCs, and acting under his Bihar Special Courts Act, 2010, a court gave its first order to confiscate property worth Rs 44 lakh belonging to an official accused of corruption.
Come April, the CM, ministers, bureaucrats and officials, down to Class III government employees, will declare their assets, while the Budget Session would see the Assembly pass a Right to Service Bill to ensure time-bound service to citizens.
The Bihar Cabinet decided in principle on Friday to scrap the MLA/MLC annual fund, facing few objections, with even the poll-chastened RJD expressing its “full backing”. The fund has been seen as a major source of corruption, with each legislator accused of cornering up to 30 per cent of the Rs 1 crore by giving contracts of development works in his/her constituency to the favoured few.
Said a senior government officer: “MLAs will now only have powers to recommend work in their Assembly segments. The fund may be routed through the districts concerned and district magistrates alone would decide the executive agencies or contractors for the development work.”
Cabinet Secretary Afzal Amanullah said the final nod would come next week, after they had agreed on an alternative to the fund. Bihar has 243 MLAs and 75 MLCs.
Other states that provide annual MLA fund include Jharkhand (Rs 3 crore), Delhi (Rs 2 crore), UP (Rs 2 crore), Maharashtra (Rs 1.5 crore), Tamil Nadu (Rs 1.5 crore), Madhya Pradesh (Rs 1 crore), Chhattisgarh (Rs 1 crore), Uttarakhand (Rs 1.25 crore), Rajasthan (Rs 50 lakh), Kerala (Rs 25 lakh), Himachal Pradesh (Rs 25 lakh) and North-eastern states (Rs 10-25 lakh).
JD-U minister and MLA Shyam Rajak called the scrapping of the fund historic. “MLAs had come under cloud because of the fund. Even honest ones were doubted. So long as MLAs have powers to get development projects done, scrapping of the fund must not bother anyone.”
“We fully back the decision,” RJD leader in the Assembly A B Siddiqui said. “I hope it will help cleanse the system.”
In private, a few of the legislators hope that the alternative mechanism being worked out provides them some discretionary financial powers.
Close on the heels of the Cabinet decision, a special Patna court on Friday asked Vigilance Investigation Bureau to confiscate property worth Rs 44,94,918 belonging to then motor vehicle inspector at Aurangabad, Raghuvansh Kunwar and his wife at Patna and Samastipur within a month. Kunwar had allegedly been arrested accepting a bribe of Rs 50,000 on September 24, 2008, by Vigilance officials, who later claimed to have recovered Rs 2 lakh in cash and jewellery and other valuables worth Rs 18 lakh from him.
The Bihar Special Courts Act, 2010, under which Kunwar’s property has been ordered seized, came into effect this February. The Act provides for confiscation of property of those accused of corruption. If that person is later acquitted, the government is to return the seized property with compound interest on its value at the time of its seizure.
Six special courts have been set up for speedy trial of corruption cases under the Act, and seven cases registered against bureaucrats, including a former DGP. The Vigilance Bureau has assesed property of these accused to be about Rs 21 crore. Those facing cases under the existing provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act also fall under the purview of the new Bihar Act now.
Fulfilling another promise made by Nitish — to “convert buildings of the corrupt into schools” — Bihar HRD Minister P K Sahi said on Saturday that the government had started the procedure to start a school in the Samastipur property of Kunwar.
Next on Nitish’s agenda is declaration of assets, and the Chief Minister has promised that he would be the first one to do so. “If my first tenure was known for conviction of 54,000 criminals, the second term might well be known for actions against the corrupt,” he says.
Cocking a snook at the Congress, which had to bite dust in the Bihar polls, Nitish adds: “Now that Bihar has tried to set the example in fighting corruption, the UPA government at the Centre must accept the demand for a JPC probe in the 2G spectrum scam.”
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