»Bhubaneswar STATE EDITIONS WAKE UP MR CLEAN, PUNISH TAINTED PUBLIC OFFICIALS Thursday, 28 August 2014 | BISWARAJ PATNAIK | in Bhubaneswar BJD MLA Pranab Balabantaray, flaunting dark glasses in media appearances, resembles a Hollywood gangster movie star. Sanjay Dasburma, another unforgivable character, is a handsome dark guy now fortunately forgotten for a while because Balabantaray, son of Kalpataru Das, is in a bigger public glare. They talked of 41 plots and houses owned by Balabantaray and family. His father, now a ‘branded land-grab offender’ has not been able to gather enough courage to confess to the crime, which could ensure him a smaller, more tolerable jail sentence if the police eventually are able to charge-sheet him after ‘Shri TerrorDatt’s’ report is out. The hated father-son duo must step down from their respective sacred temples of democracy and surrender before the enforcement authorities without delay. Balabantaray runs business concerns on village forestland by force but says audaciously that he has sold the ‘grabbed land’ in the forest area before the heat developed. There is no possibility that the father-son duo will escape. Kalpataru, meanwhile, has lost the power of speech and is likely to be placed in some ‘school for the dumb’ to regain speaking ability. He neither appears before the media nor moves freely like king as before. Sanjay Dasburma got lucky because potatoes vanished in the State. As the concerned Minister, he keeps boasting of his masterly handling of the situation and making potatoes available plentifully, which is a big lie. The prices have not fallen below 30 rupees a kilo even today. When the forestland row involving the Kalpataru-Pranab duo started raging, a branded property grabber by guile called Bikram Arukh comes on the scene to say a probe is on. It was this Arukh for whom the ‘Clean CM’ had scrapped the discretionary quota system in 2011, without anyone knowing that quotas of that criminal sort were never ever in place. The Supreme Court on March 31, 1995 did make clear specifically who can avail the State quota plots and houses: Surviving family members of persons who have laid down life for the nation by way of sacrifice — Victims of terrorist attacks, earthquake and flood victims, Disabled homeless persons, defence, police and paramilitary personnel with commendable service records, parents, widows and children of people who have been killed under extremely difficult circumstances, persons having dedicated life to promoting sports, music, literature and women’s cause but living in abject poverty and distress without help or support. Probing eyes peeped deeper into the land grab crime scene and made a startling discovery. Bureaucrats who keep polishing and dusting the ‘Rulebook’, keep interpreting it like ‘Know-all’ masters and guide political bosses by referring to the rules and codes, have been found to have stolen State land and houses by furnishing false affidavits more brazenly than politicians. Fourteen IAS officers have been spotted as grossly wrong on the ethical front. The rulebook is meant essentially to keep the executive strictly on the conscience path. The bureaucracy is the principal support system of the executive. It is paid heftily from the public exchequer to “put the foot down’ whenever the political bosses derail themselves for private or other gains. Even if the DQ (discretionary quota) was a ‘free-for-all’ arrangement, beneficiaries should have availed only one unit of property on one location. But most of them have grabbed more than one in Bhubaneswar only. Needless to say, non-resident or Odisha-hating officials have bought property in Delhi, Bangalore and other more amusing cities than Bhubaneswar. That is not being probed. The biggest shock has been caused by a senior IAS officer, who many of us believed was a messiah, a demigod. Reports keep pouring in to indicate that he has more than two houses in Bhubaneswar on false affidavit and a plot of land at Ghatikia. Now, the Government has created a strange unconstitutional post of ‘Officer on Special Duty’, an additional position for him. Anyone with a proven sin like land grab must face law enforcement authorities and explain to the masses under what pressing circumstances he grabbed scarce State property. Tarun Kanti Mishra, a former Chief Secretary, now the Chief Information Commissioner, is not only enjoying a post-retirement princely job, he is also flaunting a ‘red beacon’ atop his official car, to which he is not entitled. He must leave the Info Commission premises on moral grounds and concentrate on writing his poetry, most of which have never rhymed. Rhyming poetry is tough, and Tushar Kanti is a master of free things like free verse which does not require much effort or culture. The masses are too keen to punish land grabbers from any walk of life. They are plain crazy to have public officials punished most exemplarily because instead of upholding ethical principles to the utmost extent, they have engaged in cheating the people who pay them salary. It is high time Mr Clean emerged from his silence and discarded all criminals and tossed them to the law enforcement agencies for speediest trial so as to ensure people in public domains do not commit crime that deprive the poorest of the poor most sinfully. (The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 07:22:01 +0000
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