A month after hitting the dusty bylanes of his state’s interior villages just like Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar did several times, Jharkhand chief minister Arjun Munda has taken another leaf out of the book of success rules followed by his more spectacular Bihar counterpart. He plans to hold Cabinet meetings away from the capital Ranchi and in the districts.
Mr Munda’s new plan, a copy of a successful experiment Mr Kumar began in February 2009, has attracted more criticism than praise as his critics say it is aimed at silencing the growing public resentment at the coalition government he has been heading for the past over three months and boosting his image to ensure his victory in the upcoming Assembly bypoll.
With no letup in crime and corruption in Jharkhand ever since he assumed power as the head of an unlikely four-party coalition government at the end of three months of President’s Rule in September, Mr Munda, who continues to be the BJP MP from Jamshedpur, has been working at bringing political stability and rule of law back to the Maoist-affected Jharkhand. Last month, the tribal leader undertook a four-day tour of the state called “vikas yatra” like five similar tours of Bihar undertaken by Mr Kumar in his first regime.
Just as Mr Munda announced plans for holding Jharkhand’s Cabinet meetings in the districts for the first time in a departure from established practice, a new scam in the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna surfaced.
Engineers and contractors engaged in the road construction project allegedly siphoned off `7.67 crores since 2008.