Patna,(BiharTimes): Accusing the Nitish Kumar government of being involved in a huge ‘estimate scam’ former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi on Monday charged that he was removed from the post of chief minister after he started questioning the wasteful expenditures of Rs 22,000 to 23,000 crores.
Addressing the activists of Hindustani Awam Morcha in Munger he questioned as to what was the need to build Rs 2,000 crore new Assembly building complex when the number of legislators has come down drastically after the creation of Jharkhand.
The slow pace of work may increase the expenditure on it to Rs 5,000 to 6,000 crores, he added.He asked as to why thousands of crores are being spent lavishly on the conventional centre in Patna where there are already so many such structures in the state capital. Had it been built in Rajgir, Bodh Gaya, Vaishali, Bhagalpur or any other place of attraction for tourists and pilgrims it would have been understandable.
You all know that Patna has a very grand museum. A few crores of rupees on renovation would have been enough. But the Nitish Kumar government is spending hundreds of crores in building another one near it.
“A storm was created when I removed a high-profile Secretary involved in their construction. The whole lobby started working against me,” Manjhi said.He said what pained him most is that the Nitish government is not spending money in making the jobs of school and college teachers permanent or on paying salary to ASHA workers, cooks, Vikas Mitrs, and other employees.
He said Bihar has enough money to take up huge projects.On ‘Estimate Scam’ he said that if the construction cost of a road is Rs 50 lakh or Rs one crore estimate of Rs five crore or more would be made. The huge money thus siphoned off would be donated in the name of the party by the contractors.
He said when he tried to plug these holes and did some work for the poor he was removed.“I would not name anybody but one of the MLAs threatened to eliminate me,” he said.The HAM leader said that Rs 4,000 crores out of Rs 40,000 crore projects currently going on in Bihar goes to contractors.
Manjhi said that much hue and cry was raised when he tried to fix a quota in IIIrd and IVth category of contract for SCs, STs, backwards and Muslims. He said why nobody is asking as to why bridges are collapsing and roads getting wiped out within a few years of construction.Manjhi claimed that his rallies in Muzaffarpur and Gaya drew much larger crowd than Sonia Gandhi’s amd Narendra Modi’s during the 2014 Lok Sabha poll.This in spite of spending so little amount on them.
