The State Vigilance has registered a case against four senior officials and 29 corporators of the Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) in connection with the loot of relief material meant for the cyclone-affected victims in October.
The four officials against whom the anti-corruption wing registered the case on Monday are former CMC Commissioner Nihar Ranjan Mohapatra, suspended Deputy Commissioner Jaganarayan Kujur, Secretary Nirmal Nayak and Recovery Officer Bijay Das. It must be mentioned that arrangements had been made at the CMC office for distribution of relief materials among 24,830 cyclone-hit people of several wards who had moved to 73 cyclone shelters.
The relief material included 191.80 quintals of rice, 79 bags of dal of 50 kg each, 1,500 oil packets, 80 bags of potato of 50 kg each, 48, 636 packets of biscuits, 20 boxes of lanterns and candles. As the CMC authorities were unable to provide cooked food to the affected people for two days during the cyclone on October 11 and 12, they had decided to distribute the relief materials on October 13.
However, trouble started when some corporators and outsiders forcibly took away the relief material from the CMC office premises. It was alleged that the corporators, instead of distributing the relief material among the affected people, gave these away to the people at their own will while the remaining material was distributed elsewhere.
Following allegations, the State Government on October 21 transferred the BMC Commissioner and suspended the Deputy Commissioner. Besides, BJD supremo and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik suspended BJD city unit president Madhusudan Sahu from the party. Vigilance personnel raided 30 places on October 21 and seized some relief materials. On October 27, Vigilance officials interrogated four officials and other staff of the CMC.
The role of the Vigilance in the case had raised several eyebrows as it failed to take any action against the accused after 47 days of the raid. Now, with the Vigilance police registering cases against the accused, the latter are most likely to be arrested for violation of the Relief Code, sources said.