Seizure of Rs 20 crore: What about annual declaration of assets?

Patna,(BiharTimes): The recovery of assets worth Rs 20 crore from a woman ADM of Bhagalpur, Jayashree Thakur, raises several pertinent questions.

The first is: why after the split in the NDA last month the Vigilance and Economic Offences Wing of Bihar Police became more active. It is not that they were not doing any work in the past, but after the sacking of 11 BJP ministers on June 16 the number of raids conducted by them have suddenly increased.

Some political observers are of the view that the state government has suddenly been reminded of improving its image and distracting the people’s attention from the political developments taking place in the state.

Anyway property worth several crores have been seized in the last one month.

But the recovery of assets worth Rs 20 crore––a large amount of them in cash––from a lady officer in Bhagalpur has made one sit up and ponder over the extent of corruption and loot in the state administration. As to how is it that a single woman officer, and that too of just an ADM rank, amass such a huge amount.

It seems that in spite of tall claims of drive against corrupt officials and law to confiscate property officials are engaged in all sorts of nefarious and illegal activities. The situation was never so bad on this front.

Incidentally, it is only engineers and Bihar Administrative Service officials who are now being raided. After the then Patna Municipal Commissioner, Senthil Kumar, no other IAS officer has come under the radar.

Knowledgeable sources believe that there are many big fish which the state government can not dare to touch.

It remains to be seen how come these corrupt officials looted the public money when there is so much talk about transparency. What about the annual declaration of assets by all the public servants.

If the government officials are still busy amassing so much wealth it means that all such exercise of declaration of assets are useless.

Besides, if so many bungalows and mansions are being seized quite regularly why is it that the state government not opening schools for poor children in them. It is only in Patna that a couple of houses have been converted into schools with the media giving big publicity. Now nobody is inquiring as to how many students are there in these schools.

In recent months moveable and immoveable properties have been seized in Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Sitamarhi etc yet in no such places schools for poor has come up.