A day after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a sarcastic swipe at the alleged embezzlement of the funds meant for disaster 2013 relief works while addressing a public rally at Parade Ground in Dehradun, Chief Minister Harish Rawat constituted a judicial inquiry into the matter. Notably, while alluding to widespread corruption in the functioning of the Congress-led state government, Modi had said that the scooters here guzzled 25 litres of fuel in the place of the normal five litres in a reference to the alleged siphoning off the disaster relief funds by a section of the state government officials.
Rawat further announced that the commission would be led Justice MS Chouhan -- the retired justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court-- and would submit the report within the next three months. “The inquiry commission has been asked to focus on two points – whether there was any negligence on the part of the officials concerned during the relief operation and whether the funds meant for disaster relief were misused or embezzled in one way or the other,” CM said.
Observers say that it is a crafty move on the part of the CM who has nothing to lose from the probe. “Things happened when his sworn rival Vijay Bahuguna was at the helm of the state. It would serve him right if the probe confirms the graft charges tagged to the dispensation under his adversary, now in the BJP camp. Rather Bahuguna has reasons to be worried about,” said one of the state watchers.
Rawat further said that he had ordered a probe by the then chief secretary of the state when the Information Commission of Uttarakhand had recommended an inquiry into the alleged disaster scam. “The then CS thoroughly probed the matter and concluded in the report that it was nothing more than a clerical error,” CM said.
“When the matter resurfaced the disaster rehabilitation work was going on in full swing. That is why I did not want to de-motivate the officers engaged in the works. My priority was to have the works rightly executed. When such calamity happens the officials decide things according to the urgency of the situation and act according to their discretion even if they transgress their briefs,” he said.
“When the controversy came up I was in a dilemma about what to do-to focus on the probe or to carry things on without perturbing the rehabilitation process. I finally ordered a probe by the chief secretary. But now as no less a person than the PM has mentioned this in his speech the matter must be re-investigated to dig out for the truth,” Rawat said.
However, he declined to refer the matter to the Central Bureau of Investigation, saying that he had no confidence in the central investigative agency, now acting as a convenient tool in the hands of the ruling party at the Centre.
He took a dig at the BJP, saying that those who masterminded myriad scams related to mining, disaster, seed and poly house were in the lap of the saffron party. “BJP should better go for an internal inquiry instead of raising hackles over them in the public forums,” he said.
Quizzed over the ongoing CBI inquiry into the purported sting video scam, CM said that they have been investigating a crime that has not been committed. “How could I indulge in horse trading when it was clear that I was insisting on the rebel MlAs be promptly disqualified as members of the House under the anti-defection lawIJ” he asked.
Tearing further into BJP, he said that he was still ready to bring in CBI if the former CMs gave him a written undertaking, asking for a CBI probe into the entire gamut of alleged scams pertaining to Citurgia land scam, mining, polyhouse and the like. Asked why he was referring to the undertaking when he alone could have taken the decision of having the matter probed by CBI as the Centre did regarding the sting case tagged to him, CM quipped, “They don’t believe in democracy. We do.”