In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", a sailor's ship was stuck in the middle of the sea, and ironically, despite being surrounded by water, neither the sailor nor his crew had any drinking water. Unlike them, the poor people in Bihar are getting drinking water through taps right at their homes thanks to the Har Ghar Nal Ka Jal scheme, launched by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar exactly five years ago.
Even though the implementation of the scheme has been a success apparently, it is riddled with corruption and favouritism, according to a report by The Indian Express. Deputy Chief Minister Tarkishore Prasad's family members and aides got projects worth over Rs 53 crore under the scheme. Not just his family, several leaders from both the ruling JD(U) and BJP received favourable deals.
According to the report, Bihar’s Public Health Engineering Department (PHED), the scheme’s implementing authority, allotted 36 projects under the drinking water scheme covering several wards in at least nine panchayats of Katihar district in 2019-20, from where Deputy CM Prasad is a four-time MLA, to his daughter-in-law Puja Kumari — and two companies linked to his brother-in-law Pradeep Kumar Bhagat; and close aides Prashant Chandra Jaiswal, Lalit Kishore Prasad and Santosh Kumar.
Prasad has denied that corruption took place while allotting the projects and pointed out that he was the Katihar MLA at the time and became Deputy Chief Minister in November 2020. But he confirmed that his daughter-in-law Puja got contracts for four wards but said he had no direct link to the two other companies although his brother-in-law was a director of one of them.
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Published 22 September 2021, 10:11 IST