Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s tacit acknowledgement of long-standing rumours about corrupt bureaucrats investing in real estate in the state and thereby contributing to the spiralling of land prices has led to the Opposition parties dub his highly publicised war against corruption as a sham.
In what is being described as another sign of the JD(U)-BJP alliance government readying to intensify its fight against corruption, the chief minister mentioned for the first time ever the possible role of corrupt bureaucrats in the boom in the real estate market in and around the state capital Patna and some major towns.
The Opposition parties, the Congress and the RJD in particular, have for long been attributing the property boom to investments made by bureaucrats with black money.
“I have been told that corrupt bureaucrats have been investing in real estate and creating a boom in the market during my tenure. I am having a close watch on the matter. I do not watch the boom to take place with black money,” said Mr Kumar at a public function in Patna organised to introduce a new pension scheme for teachers on Saturday.
But Mr Kumar’s public mention of the decidedly deep malady and his apparent sense of surprise about it drew flak from the RJD, Bihar’s main Opposition party, which accused him of feigning ignorance on the boom in real estate prices. “How come the chief minister, who keeps stressing his government’s efforts at rooting out corruption, says he does not know the real reasons behind the boom in the property market? This is purely caused by the huge loot of development funds,” said RJD spokesman Shakeel Ahmed Khan.
The fact that both the government and the Opposition parties have started engaging on a sensitive issue of corruption for the first time since the NDA came to power in 2005 has raised hopes about finding ways to curtail the unrealistically galloping property prices. Unless this crisis is addressed, the ruling JD(U)’s growing demands for a Bihar-like exercise against corruption across India would lose steam fast, said analysts.