Ex-Bihar minister who flagged corruption in department in 2022 throws a challenge

PATNA: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Sudhakar Singh on Monday demanded an impartial probe into the implementation of the state’s agriculture road maps, saying he had ordered an inquiry into the implementation of the previous three road maps in September 2022 when he was Bihar agriculture minister but the probe was scuttled.

The Nitish Kumar government launched Bihar’s fourth agriculture road map in 2023. The first was launched in 2008, the second in 2012 and the third in 2017. On Monday, Sudhakar Singh released the letter that he had written on September 17, 2022, and highlighted corruption in the department, saying all his department officials are “thieves and thereby being head of the department he is head of the thieves”.

Singh said he also ordered an inquiry to review the implementation of the three road maps which, he said, involved spending ₹3.75 lakh crore on the projects in the last 15 years.

“Barely two weeks after this order, I was removed from the cabinet due to political reasons. But prime facie, it is clear that there has been huge corruption in the name of agriculture road map and the chief minister is directly involved in it,” Singh said at a media briefing at his house in Patna, his counter-offensive after the state government held out the threat of an inquiry against RJD leaders who were ministers in the previous Grand Alliance government.

On Saturday, Kumar said he recently came to know about irregularities that took place in departments headed by RJD ministers when the Janata Dal-United was in alliance with the RJD and was ordering inquiries to probe them.

“Review is a good thing, but the department with the highest expenditure on a single roadmap needs to be reviewed first.... It is why there was never any review of the agriculture road map, a basic requisite before launching the next phase, and who was behind this move to take away the budgeted amount from other departments,” he said.

Sudhakar Singh, who has been a sharp critic of Nitish Kumar even when he was in the government, said the inquiry should probe how crores of rupees were spent by the chief minister on the pretext of improving the plight of farmers. “The third roadmap’s main objective was to increase farmers’ income, but according to a parliamentary committee’s report tabled in Parliament on March 24, 2022, the income of farmers remains the lowest in Bihar. Also, the production of grains has fallen,” he said.