Koda: Shooting off the hip?

Ranchi, June 27: There are, believe it or not, 10,000 irrigation schemes in the state but only 78 engineers at the disposal of the irrigation department.

Who can, therefore, blame the poor irrigation minister for paying Rs 9 crore to consultants, some of them blacklisted by the erstwhile Bihar government?

The information provided an unusual spark in the Assembly on an otherwise drab day. It was a seemingly innocuous call-attention notice raised by Janata Dal (U) leader Radhakrishna Kishore.

The government, he charged, had engaged six private consultants to prepare project reports and expenditure estimates for minor irrigation schemes, though the department itself had an army of engineers. But it still found it prudent to get the work done by consultants at a cost of Rs 9.5 crore, though some of the firms were blacklisted.

Water resources minister Kamlesh Kumar Singh came up with a weak reply. The department, he argued, was short-staffed and there was an acute shortage of engineers. Each of the six irrigation districts, he informed the House, had one executive engineer, three assistant engineers and nine junior engineers. It was not sufficient to do the work at short notice, he pleaded.

Significantly, the minister acknowledged that the private consultants hired for the purpose had not visited most of the sites. They had prepared the estimates after ?aerial surveys?, he said.

This prompted an uproar with the Opposition alleging largescale irregularities and the minister standing his ground and declaring defiantly that he was ready for a ?departmental inquiry?, presumably conducted by himself.

A chivalrous finance minister, Raghubar Das, came to the rescue of his junior colleague and tried to pacify the members. The members, he admonished, should at least occasionally believe in what the ministers state.

While this comedy of errors was getting enacted, parliamentary affairs minister Madhu Koda suddenly stood up to declare something utterly unparliamentary. Assembly committees, he declared, were completely useless.

Before a stunned Speaker could react, Koda went on to claim that in 2001 too, an Assembly committee was constituted to look into irregularities in the irrigation department. But, he went on to add, the committee was yet to submits its report.

By now the Speaker had found his voice. If it is found that the said committee has submitted its report, he sternly said, then a privilege motion could be initiated against the minister. Members, specially ministers, should be careful when they speak in the House, the troubled Speaker added.

Koda by now had managed to divert attention to himself and Congress members stood up to demand an unconditional apology from Koda or the minister, they said, should face a privilege motion. They claimed that the said assembly committee had submitted its report in the year 2002 itself.

The Speaker then took matters in his own hand and referred Kishore?s complaint to the call attention committee of the Assembly.