Slow lane, quick money

IT was a scandal that best explained why Bihar8217;s roads were8212;and continue to be8212;in the state that they are. The bitumen case w...

IT was a scandal that best explained why Bihar8217;s roads were8212;and continue to be8212;in the state that they are. The bitumen case was among the five major scandals that hit Bihar between 1996 and 1998.

The bitumen scandal that broke in 1997, came close on the heels of the fodder fraud. It involved placing excessive orders of bitumen tar used in road construction. Transporters supplied less than the order, siphoning off large portions of it to the black market.

The loot was shared by transporters, officials of the Road Construction Department and politicians. The fraud, that was spread in 12 districts, most of which later became part of Jharkhand, set the state back by more than Rs 100 crore.

At the centre of the case was the then Bihar road construction minister Iliyas Hussain, who oversaw and financed several of his party8217;s grand gareeb rallies.

A CBI raid at his private secretary8217;s residence at the time had found Rs 98 lakh in a sack.

Hussain had to resign and was sent to jail. He wanted to do a Laloo and install his wife as minister but Laloo didn8217;t oblige. He is now out on bail and is an RJD MLA.

Including several engineers, transporters and some officials of the Indian oil corporation that was supplying bitumen to the state, there are a few hundred accused in dozens of cases registered in Bihar and Jharkhand.

One case pertains to bitumen worth Rs 40 lakh disappearing on its way to Aurangabad district in Bihar.

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The CBI took over the cases from the state police following a Patna HC order in 1998. In Bihar and Jharkhand combined, there are roughly 60 cases related to the bitumen scandal. The CBI has finished investigation in all the cases and chargesheets have been filed against more than 200 people8212;many of the accused are absconding.

		CASE FILE

			Dead End 8226; For six years8212;from 1990 to 1996, bitumen was being sold in the black market 8226; Out of the 60 cases filed, verdict on a few of them is expected by the end of this year 8226; Other prime accused are two former engineers-in-chief road Y N Yadav and Dhaneshwar Baitha and two former directors purchase Kedar Paswan and Panchu Mehta. They are out on bail 8226; A PIL was filed by BJP leader Sushil Modi on the bitumen case and the Patna High Court later ordered a CBI inquiry

At the CBI court in Patna, already 32 cases are pending trial. More than 20 are in Jharkhand. In several of the cases, Hussain is an accused. Two cases in Patna are awaiting permission for prosecution8212;both are against Hussain; one a conspiracy case and the other a disproportionate assets case.

Since Hussain is an MLA, permission to prosecute him has to come from the Speaker of the state legislative assembly. In several cases against him, the agency has already acquired permission.

If the bitumen fraud had not ruined the conditions of the state8217;s roads sufficiently, the aftermath of it definitely has.

A large number of PWD engineers accused in the case are barred from promotion and several vacancies in the department are thus lying vacant. Coupled with this, there is no fresh recruitment, causing severe shortage of manpower in the crucial department.

Second, the knee-jerk reaction of a scandal tainted, paranoid government set further hurdles in road construction. The government changed its bitumen procurement policy8212;withdrawing the earlier practice of the PWD doing centralised purchasing.

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It is now the contractor8217;s responsibility to procure bitumen. Since it can be only got from the oil companies, which is a lengthy process and can be got only in large quantities, the new decision added a new set of problems.

If ever you subject yourself to the torture of Bihar roads, you8217;ll know where all the money that should have built these roads went.