PATNA: Senior Bihar BJP minister Dilip Kumar Jaiswal on Monday put his own government on the defensive with his hard criticism of alleged corruption in his department even as opposition RJD attacked Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for remaining a “mute spectator” to the plight of common people bearing the brunt of the bribery menace.
While addressing a monthly meeting of senior officials of his department, Jaiswal, who holds the portfolio of revenue and land reforms department, admitted that no work was being done in the department without money changing hands. “Since I will discharge my duties with full honesty, I expect that officers should also discharge their duties without indulging in any corrupt practice,” he added.
Revenue employees and other lower-level officials and middlemen in collusion with the land mafias have aggravated the situation as even the poor are unable to get their work done unless they cough up good money, he commented.
Senior RJD leader and party`s chief spokesperson Shakti Singh Yadav said corruption is all-pervasive in the state, “No one can get any work done as now even a minister is showing the mirror. We have institutional corruption in the state, nobody can deny it but the chief minister acting like a ‘Bhishmpitamah’ is mute spectator to it,” he added.
However, senior JD(U) leader and party spokesperson Arvind Nishad said that stern action had been taken against those convicted in corruption-related cases.
He pleaded that there were instances of government officers and employees indulging in the corrupt practices, but the Nitish regime had faced any corruption charge during its nearly 19-year of rule. Nishad said that the Nitish Kumar government had opened a primary school for poor children in the palatial house of a retired IAS officer Shiv Shankar Verma, suspended for corruption. Several bureaucrats had to face the heat of government action for being involved in corruption, he said.