Greasy palms exposed
CM Vasundhara Raje sets the Anti Corruption Bureau on corrupt civil servants.
Rajasthan is different this year. May and June are the hottest months in the state's desiccated climes, but this time around it is the 'corrupt'-civil servants, politicians and their cronies-who are feeling the brunt of what may be the severest summer in decades. The past month has seen former Union secretary for financial services, Gurdial Singh Sandhu, and the state's special secretary for health, Niraj Kumar Pawan, two influential bureaucrats during the tenure of former Congress chief minister Ashok Gehlot, land in jail on alleged corruption charges.
The two are part of an extended list feeling the heat from the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB), which is directly under chief minister Vasundhara Raje. " I have told them to do what they understand to be correct,'' Raje told India Today on the extent to which she controls the ACB.
Sandhu, who retired in September 2015, was forced to turn himself in after the Supreme Court rejected his anticipatory bail petition, filed by former Union minister and senior lawyer Kapil Sibal on May 9. The officer, who spent eight critical years in Rajasthan's urban development department between 1998 and 2013 (during two alternating terms of Gehlot), is charged with multiple offences, including 'illegally' leasing Jaipur Development Authority land worth Rs 125 crore to realtor Shailendra Garg in 2011.
V.K. Singh, inspector general of police, ACB, says, "Sandhu colluded with others, including two Rajasthan Administrative Service officers and perhaps even former urban development minister Shanti Dhariwal to hastily push through the orders, ignoring the objections." Sandhu, however, denies the allegations. Dhariwal has been questioned twice so far.
Under Raje, the ACB appears to be making a show of going after wrongdoers, irrespective of political lineage. So if Sandhu is in trouble for alleged offences during Gehlot's tenures, Pawan is in hot water for his purported misdemeanours during the present BJP regime. The ACB's hands-on IG Singh conducted raids at 19 different locations to unearth a major scam in the National Health Mission which eventually led to the arrest of Pawan.
Three others, including Ajit Soni, a go-between startlingly empowered as a nodal officer (allegedly to work out contracts and bribes), and Deepa Gupta, chief accounts officer with the department, were also held. ACB detectives claim to have traced Rs 2 crore worth of bribes, given in 2015-16 for publicity contracts of the health mission. Predictably, both Pawan and Gupta deny the charges, the latter insisting that 'seniors' were against her and that they also "took bribes through middlemen".
ACB officials say rather than nailing individual instances of corruption, they are now more focused on rooting out the 'systemic rot'. Acting director-general Bhupendra Dak says ACB investigations have unearthed startling instances of top officials-IAS officers and chief engineers-outsourcing their powers to middlemen who then indulge in outright extortion. Dak's officers even found instances of honey traps wherein, besides money, sexual favours were also on offer. "The entire process makes it impossible for people unwilling to pay bribes to land contracts," says Dinesh M.N., IGP (ACB), who booked 11 people, including a chief engineer in the same national health mission complex for taking bribes just a week after the raid on Pawan's office. It showed how brazen officials have become.
A pen drive recovered from Soni's residence, ACB officers say, has details of bribes paid to Pawan on tenders for grassroots publicity of the national health mission, including "money the officer's wife spent shopping". A seized video allegedly shows Gupta demanding Rs 20 lakh while threatening to blacklist a vendor. In another audio recording, a voice matching Soni's can be heard advising a vendor that he could save half of a Rs 7 crore contract "by doing things the right way".
Among the 'right ways', the ACB discovered, was the use of Arogya vans, hired for publicity of public health schemes, including street plays and health quizzes in different places where excess money was claimed. In yet another contract, the price of toys given away to attract family participation in health mission schemes was inflated four-fold. The bureau estimates that on an average 17 per cent of each contract was earmarked to grease palms, but often officials demanded even more.
The first signs of the crackdown came with the arrest of IAS officer and CEO of Jaipur Municipal Corporation, L.C. Aswal, in 2014. Now, many believe Raje's zero-tolerance initiative and giving the ACB unbridled powers is a response to the heat she took in mid- 2015 over her alleged endorsement of former IPL chief Lalit Modi. But clearly she's intent on demonstrating that she means business-of late, the ACB has been registering cases at an average of one a day. Like Aswal, officers like former principal secretary (mines), Ashok Singhvi, long counted among her favourites, were also jailed.
Although the ACB's actions have discomfited Rajasthan's bureaucracy, the chief minister seems to be accumulating more than a few brownie points in the capital. In May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally intervened to get the sanction to prosecute Singhvi, a senior IAS officer (clearance came in two days after the PM was informed that the file was stuck, in Delhi, for nearly four months).
The crackdown this May has been cleverly designed to help Raje project a 'clean, no-nonsense' administration. And it already has her critics on the back-foot. Former CM Gehlot, who vociferously defended officers like Sandhu, insisting that they were being targeted only because of their proximity to him, has curiously turned silent. Indeed, his detractors, both within the ruling BJP and the Congress, suggest the former CM perhaps now fears that the ACB could turn on him.
Gehlot has reason to worry. Among the complaints being probed are the questionable building permissions granted during his tenure for a project in Jaipur's Statue Circle as well as dubious sanctions allowing 'double spends' on projects in Sardarpura, Gehlot's constituency in Jodhpur. Information with the ACB suggests that the Jodhpur Development Authority permitted massive violations, flouting rules and revising Rs 396 crore contracts to Rs 643 crore days before the imposition of the poll code in December 2013.
Some of the cases have revealed corruption at bizarre levels. Like a community centre, for which a tender was awarded for Rs 30 lakh, being revised to Rs 1 crore in one meeting and to Rs 2 crore in another. There are also instances of payments released without any work being done.
Of course, there's a lobby in the bureaucracy upset about colleagues being caught. They accuse the CM of demoralising them, but many others are happy. Chief minister Raje, if she sticks to the path and if citizens are seen to benefit from her actions, then her party might too, in the next assembly elections in December 2018.
"WE HAVE NOT GONE FOR TOKENISM"
Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje in an exclusive interview to Senior Editor Rohit Parihar, answers questions on a range of subjects including some of her successes and failures. Excerpts:
You are halfway into your term. How much have you achieved so far? There's a perception that you have slowed down...
My team has done enough to ensure that we finish most of what was promised by 2018. The BJP has been creating records in every poll since we came to power, which shows that the people know that I am doing my best.
But with an 80 per cent majority, shouldn't things have moved a lot faster?
The state was bankrupt when we took over. We got it back on the rails. We have tried to find spaces within which to give what the people require. I have also taken over the Rs 60,000 crore debt of our electricity discoms. We have not gone for tokenism to get publicity nor for mega projects at the cost of depriving the people of what they need most.
How has your governance style changed in the second term?
I learnt a lot from my previous innings. I am a little older and a little wiser, more in control of my emotions. I am also travelling more, so are my ministers and officials as we review policies and their execution. I have made surprise visits to three districts so far.
There was lot of hype created about your labour and industrial reforms. Have those brought in any investment?
I did not create the hype. Those reforms were a first for the country. The fact that we had so many proposals lined up during Resurgent Rajasthan, our investors' meet last November, shows that our reforms have enthused them. These are small steps but a lot of projects are coming up.
You had promised 1.5 million jobs in the government and private sector, including training the unemployed in various skills?
We have already trained 1,30,459 youths of which 53,568 have got jobs in the private sector. In the government sector, six lakh jobs have been offered. I will be putting all such data on digital signboards in every district where it will be updated with every job created.
What are your favourite projects, the success stories?
The Bhamashah scheme which enables a woman to have a bank account in which benefits of all family members are directly transferred. This was a direct transfer of subsidy concept that I initiated in my first tenure but was abandoned later. I have restarted it and five crore five lakh transactions have taken place so far; some Rs 2,480 crore has been directly deposited into the accounts of beneficiaries. We have added health insurance to it and will now link it to their health card. It's a scheme close to my heart.
Some dream projects failed to take off, like the PPP in state highways which was to make 20,000 km of roads.
The overall recession has taken its toll but there will be investments the moment the economic scenario brightens up for such a massive investment. That said, we have done exceptionally well in providing roads inside villages along with drains, as also in national highways.
What about the inputs from the advisory council and its sub-committees?
Tremendous. Council member Uday Kotak (MD, Kotak Mahindra Bank) has literally bailed out our power sector (with a Rs 5,000 crore loan). We have also got valuable inputs in health, water conservation, heritage and art and education. Lot of innovations have come from them.
You were expected to have 5,0007,000 ration shops running as mini department stores by March 31 in a tie-up with the Kishore Biyani group. That too is lagging.
Biyani is supplying quality goods at prices that have to be the lowest for a similar product. It is a difficult task in such a vast state. Besides, ration dealers also must feel comfortable about such a tie-up. So far, 1,200 have come aboard.
There were PILs accusing you of grabbing the Dholpur Palace and stealing carpets from a state-run hotel. The courts have dismissed the cases, but how do you feel?
Some people habitually file PILs and often they have the backing of my political rivals in the Congress. The courts have dismissed the petitions and even imposed costs in one case.
Your son Dushyant is an MP but you have kept him away from state politics?
Dushyant is happy with his family and his constituency.