Pano Pandit, Bablu Saw, Ravi Kumar Barnwal, Avdhesh Sahu, Ferhat Nazneen, Vipin Kumar Pandey and dozens more... They don’t know one another at all while standing in the same queue at CM Janta Darbar at CMO (Ranchi) on Wednesday. But they all have at least one similarity among them that they all feel cheated by the administration and its way of working.
More than half of the cases which were put in front of Social Welfare Minister louis Marandi at CM Janta Darbar were of sheer negligence of inspectors, BDOs, SPs, DCs and other government officials across the state. Marandi was listeneing to people’s grievances in Janta Darbar here on Wednesday.
The Minister listened to each and every complainant with patience, sometimes asking for solutions from complainant itself and other times ordering the concerned authorities. However, almost all the complainants who came to Janta Darbar, had only one answer as assurance from the Minister at the time they were sent back, “let us see”, or that “we will do something”.
Pano Pandit from Dumka came to Janta Darbar with empty stomach. According to his complaint, his land was captured by a muscleman neighbour. He got decree of his land in back as recently as a couple of months ago after going through lengthy case processes and paper verifications that took almost five years.
“Even after that, the muscleman has kept my land captured. He is influential enough to get hold of my land, while
I have been left to die starved, as I don’t have other source of income. The administration doesn’t listen to the poor like us,” said Pandit. He was assured of “some action soon” in Darbar.
More grave was the case of one Ravi Kumar Barnwal, who wanted to start a small denim manufacturing unit in Mesra (Ranchi). Grave, because Jharkhand has topped in the list comprising of states where starting a business is easiest in comparison to rest all the states of country and CM himself has been doing every possible thing to lure investors.
“I purchased a piece of land in `4.5 lakh from one Anil Roy who claimed himself being a builder and real estate agent. At the time of registry, I came to know that it was government owned land. I got a case lodged against him, and even arrest warrant has also been issued. But he is still at large, and no one appears to do anything in the case, as Roy happens to be an influential man,” he said.
Barnwal added that after being operational, his denim unit could easily have provided job to at least 60-70 people.
“I respect PM, who preaches of job creation. I respect CM, who wants Jharkhand to be a start-up state. But with this attitude of sheer negligence at the level of SPs and DCs, I doubt of any success. Sometimes I do think those who believe on gun are better than us, who want to do things in systematic way,” said Barnwal.
There were more than 200 applicants at Janta Darbar organised on Wednesday.