Dr PC Rath episode a case in point
The CAG report on land scam in Odisha has stirred the ordinary Odia’s emotions and caused grave public anger because scarce, precious urban property in prime locations have been doled out to unworthy people or organisations.
It is known to all that out of the 44 doctor allottees, 13 have simply done nothing. Several eminent citizens wanted to make sure that the missing Dr PC Rath given the costliest land in the best location is not one Dr Pratap Chandra Rath working for the Apollo group.
The truth is that Dr Pratap, a famous France–trained interventional cardiologist, has executed the highest number of angioplasty procedures in South Asia. He is comparable with the world famous humanitarian oncologist Dr Surendra S Shastri and the great philanthropist cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Devi Shetty.
Someone made public the fact that Dr Pratap Chandra Rath is not the same Dr PC Rath, who stole land from the Government by floating a sham company called The Asian Super Specialty Hospital and Research Institute. If Dr Pratap were on the scene, he would have named the organisation with the word ‘Heart’ incorporated without fail. Dr Pratap Rath is a blue-eyed healer in the Apollo fold. He is very fond of Odisha and could have come up with the best healthcare centre if given an opportunity.
This cardiologist is a philanthropist who performs angioplasty for fair prices for all his patients and absolutely free for the poor. He donates to public causes liberally and stands rock-steady behind social workers. Though the amounts are not known, he had donated huge sums of money during the Super Cyclone and Phailin calamities.
He helped the Uttarakhand and J&K disaster victims with monetary support.
The worrying point is that the mysterious one Dr PC Rath, for sure, is an impersonator without a base or credential. He duped the State Government authorities by making them believe that a great hospital could be put up by him.
Firstly, as ordinary people should know, names of genuine promoters are invariably given in full, not in acronyms. Dr PC Rath is not a full name and never ever acceptable in standard documents.
Whether it was Purna, Prafulla, Pulak or Pramod, no one among the allotting authorities ever wanted to know. It is precisely this specific reason why suspicion arose among activists after the CAG report agitated them.
This apart, a whole cumbersome, lengthy exercise was undertaken by several State departments to prepare a full proposal and push it up the hierarchy to place it in the Council of Ministers for a Cabinet approval in 2004.
The land application was made by this Dr PC Rath in 2003. The whole process consumed enormous public time, energy and money to finalise the allotment in Dr PC Rath’s favour with the most stringent condition of starting construction of the ‘super hospital’ within 12 months of allotment, failing which the land would be automatically resumed. There was also another nonnegotiable condition: to treat 10 per cent indoor patients and 25 per cent outdoor patients completely free.
All this only because most precious public property in the best location of Bhubaneswar was given for just a song: 3.5 acres of land in posh Samantapuri for a mere 7.5 lakh rupees an acre.
The hospital never came up for years on end and there was no hue and cry against the scam. The Apollo group appeared only in 2006 and availed land just adjacent to the Dr PC Rath’s allotted plot.
How Apollo managed to get four acres exactly there when all other nationally reputed hospitals were given plots in Chandrasekharpur and Patia mauzas is a great mystery. This Dr PC Rath seemed to have been in constant touch with the Apollo group and eventually managed to get things done behind public glare.
Some of the Apollo detractors say that the whole design was only a ploy to grab prime land by using some Odia guy. Apollo on record stands on four acres only, but in reality it occupies 7.5 acres. Even if the missing DR PC Rath had walked out, there would be long, cumbersome process of surrender with a public notification and premium money forfeited for breach of contract, after an expensively exhaustive exercise.
Nothing on record is available as per the CAG report.
The whole disturbing ‘Apollo on 7.5 acres’ mystery was unravelled only recently when the hawk-eyed CAG flipped the lid and spilled the beans explosively. In its public report, it came down heavily on the land allotment irregularities. One of the worst findings was the ‘Dr PC Rath land allotment’ because even if it was surrendered to the GA Department, the developments were never made public.
The procedure is to surrender with sufficient reason seeking pardon and amnesty from ‘breach of contract’ penalty. In case the same land is reallotted to Apollo on merit, records of ‘due procedures having been followed’ are to be made public.
Nothing of the sort has been done. Further, the Apollo group has not been given a square inch more than just four acres at Samantapuri. The Apollo group has to explain now how it applied for more 3.5 acres and how the GA Department decided to give that land arbitrarily to it without following rules and having it passed in the Cabinet after forgiving and condoning original allottee Dr PC Rath’s grave failure to come up with the Asian Super Specialty Hospital and Research Institute.
The CAG report is extremely scathing and condemning for abusing authority to invisible characters or promoters. There is big rumour that the original allottee Dr PC Rath has vanished into thin air, and the real doctor Pratap Chandra Rath is wrongly identified as the one who organised land for Apollo.
The land scam will continue to haunt the Odisha people for quite some time. And the people will of course come after those who have posed to be saintly but are Satanic in nature.
The CAG has done great magic by exposing numerous misdeeds by the State authorities that has caused the public exchequer enormous loss. Hopefully, such executive mistakes will not occur again. The scams have given birth to a number of watchful activists. They will swoop on the offenders without fail. The RTI has given them the best weapons to demolish opacity-loving officials. All the same, Odisha is likely to be in turmoil for some more time!
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)