Friday, Apr 05, 2013
Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has ordered an inquiry after land registration documents pertaining to the billion-rupee fodder scam went missing from the registry department.
Several senior politicians, including former chief ministers Lalu Prasad Yadav and Dr Jagannath Mishra, and bureaucrats are accused in the case which surfaced in the mid-1990’s.
Authorities said around 525 documents of land registration deeds, mostly related to the fodder scam, are missing from the Patna registry office. The documents had been sent to various officers in Patna to complete formalities when they went missing.
“The district magistrate of Patna has been directed to trace all the missing documents and conduct a thorough probe into the entire incident,” Bihar’s registration minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav told media.
He vowed action against the officials concerned if any irregularities wer found.
On Thursday, a senior Bharatiya Janata Party lawmaker Vinod Narayan Jha even raised the matter in the Bihar state assembly while another party lawmaker Sanjay Saraogi sought a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into the missing of fodder scam papers.
Fodder scam involving huge embezzlement of government funds of about Rs9.5 billion meant for purchase of animal fodders had broke out in 1996 when Lalu Prasad Yadav was the chief minister of Bihar.
The scam eventually cost his chief ministership as he handed over his throne to his housewife Rabri Devi before being sent to jail by the court in the case. About two decades after the scam came to light, Yadav along with many accused continue to makes rounds of various courts in Bihar and Jharkhand, pleading their innocence. He is accused in some six cases of fodder scam.
By Lata Rani Correspondent
Gulf News 2013. All rights reserved.
