Bihar: Deputy CM responds after report claims contracts worth Rs 53 crore awarded to kin and aides under Nitish Kumar’s flagship project

Dy CM Prasad, nevertheless, denied the allegation of political patronage and stated that he was the Katihar MLA when the contracts have been awarded and have become Deputy Chief Minister in November 2020.

Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and BJP chief Tarkishore Prasad’s kin and aides have been awarded obtained a contract value Rs 53 crore for implementing ‘Har Ghar Nal Ka Jal’ challenge, a flagship scheme of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, The Indian Specific reported right this moment. Whereas the scheme has lined round 95 per cent of its goal of 1.08 lakh panchayat wards, the IE investigation threw up some incidents of political patronage. The Dy CM has, nevertheless, stated that there’s nothing mistaken in doing enterprise and the contract was awarded when he was simply an MLA, and never a minister.

As per the IE report, Tarkishore Prasad’s members of the family and shut aides obtained challenge contracts value over Rs 53 crore underneath the scheme. Not solely this, a number of state-level leaders of the JD(U) and the BJP additionally obtained contracts indicating political patronage in implementing authorities schemes.

The report revealed that Bihar’s Public Well being Engineering Division (PHED) allotted 36 initiatives throughout 2019-20 to folks and companies linked to the deputy CM. The challenge contracts have been unfold over a number of wards in not less than 9 panchayats of Katihar district. The contracts have been awarded to his daughter-in-law Puja Kumari, two corporations linked to his brother-in-law Pradeep Kumar Bhagat and shut aides Prashant Chandra Jaiswal, Lalit Kishore Prasad and Santosh Kumar.

Officers concerned within the implementation of the scheme knowledgeable on the situation of anonymity that Prasad’s daughter-in-law was awarded contracts value Rs 1.6 crore masking 4 wards within the Bhavada panchayat of Katihar regardless of zero expertise within the subject. Kumari is registered as a person contractor with PHED and has the identical postal tackle as her father-in-law.

Dy CM Prasad, nevertheless, denied the allegation of political patronage and stated that he was the Katihar MLA when the contracts have been awarded and have become Deputy Chief Minister in November 2020. Whereas he confirmed that his daughter-in-law had obtained contracts for 4 wards, he denied having any hyperlinks with different corporations. “We’re in enterprise, ought to we not do it?…There are a complete of two,800 items in Katihar; my household has obtained simply 4. There’s nothing mistaken with doing enterprise. One should be certain that there shouldn’t be any irregularity,” he stated. Prasad claimed that he’s not even distantly related to alleged corporations – Deepkiran Infrastructure and Jeevanshree Infrastructure.