With the alleged Rs 11,412-crore “treasury scam” badly denting the Nitish Kumar government’s image in poll-bound Bihar, hundreds of officials from several government departments are currently engaged in preparing thick sheaves of DC bills to be submitted at the AG office so as to erase the taints sullying the government.
The Bihar State Textbook Publishing Corporation (BSTPC) office in Patna is one of dozens of venues where education department officials from various districts of the state are seen busily engaged in arranging the detailed contingency (DC) bills, brought there in gunny sacks in both government and private vehicles, for the past three days. The whole atmosphere is hushed and officials refuse to speak to the media. Sources said some 150 officials and employees of the Bihar education department have been put in the gigantic task of producing and furnishing the DC bills for expenses incurred over seven years. With the education department now seized with the task of arranging the DC bills to convince the CAG, the education department headquarters in the secretariat has been wearing a quiet look for the past three days.
The education department, a major defaulter in submitting expenditure details as per the CAG report, has reportedly already submitted DC bills to the tune of Rs 425 crore in the past few days. In Fatuhan and Phulwarisharif, both near Patna, scores of private persons have been engaged in expeditiously preparing the DC bills for various other departments, said sources.
Sources said DC bills worth Rs 231 crores were submitted at the AG office on a single day on Monday. In the CAG’s latest report, the amount of pending DC bills for expenditures has come down from the previous Rs 11,412 crores to Rs 10,959.59 crores. The amount of pending DC bills for expenditures up to March 2009, however, remains as high as Rs 13,203.39 crores. Meanwhile, about two lakh state government officials, including the chief secretary and principal secretaries of various departments, risk non-payment of their salaries if their departments fail to furnish the pending DC bills, if any, in the next two weeks. The 12,000 drawing and disbursing officials in Bihar, most of them attached to the education department, are, therefore, having the busiest ever time in their service periods. With suspicion rife that the DC bills being arranged could be fabricated and fake, political attacks on the government and demands for a CBI probe into the bills are ripe.