COMMENTARY

Massive Treasury Fraud Rocks Bihar

DB

In parliamentary parlance, MLAs or MPs belonging to the government side are often described as comprising the ‘treasury benches’. The treasury is obviously quite central to the notion of any government. Highlighting the centrality of the treasury to Nitish Kumar’s theory and practice of ‘good governance’ in poll-bound Bihar is a staggering Rs. 11,412 crore treasury fraud. Successive annual reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) have been pointing to the growing discrepancy in amounts withdrawn from the Bihar treasury and accounts submitted by the Bihar government. With the Bihar government refusing to take any corrective action, in an unprecedented move, on July 15 the Patna High Court ordered a CBI probe into the issue of unaccounted withdrawals.
The discrepancy detected by the CAG goes back to the year beginning on April 1, 2002 and runs through substantial periods under two successive regimes and the intermediate period of President’s Rule to March 31, 2008. While the withdrawals thus began during the last years of Rabri Devi’s reign as Chief Minister, the fraudulent withdrawals have grown dramatically in recent years and most of the withdrawals have happened under rural development and employment heads like Indira Awas, MNREGA, mid-day meals etc. Nitish Kumar never tires of telling the people of Bihar how he has ‘reversed’ the negative trends of the Lalu-Rabri era, but the treasury fraud, more than 11 times as big as the infamous fodder scam, serves as a stark reminder of the cruel continuity between Lalu Prasad’s widely condemned misrule and Nitish Kumar’s much-trumpeted reign of ‘good governance’.
The NDA government of Bihar has sought a stay on the CBI probe on the plea that the CAG report in question is yet to be processed by the Public Accounts Committee of Bihar Assembly and hence the HC order would amount to judicial intrusion into legislative autonomy. Meanwhile, opposition MLAs demanding an answer from the government on the scam have been assaulted inside the Assembly by MLAs from the treasury benches even as the BJP and the JD(U) seek to trivialize the enormous irregularity as a mere problem of ‘adjusting accounts’. The government admits that there has been ‘delay’ in submitting accounts and to set it right the government has now ordered senior district and departmental officials to furnish all pending vouchers within a week! How vouchers missing for all these years will be ‘produced’ overnight is anybody’s guess!
The HC order clearly corroborates the public perception and experience of growing bureaucratic domination and ‘developmental corruption’ under the present government. In fact, the people themselves have unearthed many local-level scams related to MNREGA, PDS, housing and many other rural development schemes. We are also aware of the excise scam indicated by the erstwhile excise minister who was shown the doors for daring to write to the CM asking for a probe into the excise evaded by the growing army of liquor vendors. The CBI or any investigative agency will really have to cast its net pretty wide to get a proper assessment of the actual incidence of frauds in Nitish Kumar’s paradigm of development and good governance.

If megabuck corruption is back in a big way, can criminalization – the notorious political cousin of corruption during the later years of RJD rule – be far away? The JD(U) and BJP have of course always been known for patronizing their own set of criminal-politicians. The Sunil Pandeys and Dhumal Singhs have been known to be an integral part of the JD(U) camp. And now with elections round the corner, Nitish Kumar is cosying up to a whole set of notorious mafia dons who had once been central to ‘governance’ under the RJD. Former central minister and RJD leader Mohammad Taslimuddin, a ‘powerful’ name in Kishanganj region in Bihar-Bengal border, has recently joined the JD(U). The other day Nitish Kumar visited the ancestral house of Anand Mohan in Panchgachia village in Saharsa district. Reports have it that Anand Mohan's wife Lovely Anand, a former MP, has been offered a senior party post in the JD(U). It is also believed that moves are afoot to induct Hina Sahab, wife of Siwan’s notorious former MP Mohammad Shahabuddin, into the JD(U) fold.