Ranchi, April 26: Three years after a travel agency booked air tickets for JMM chief Shibu Soren, the then chief minister of Jharkhand, it is yet to get the payment.

The agency knocked on the door of every department of the chief minister’s secretariat. It even sought the cause behind the delay of the payment under the Right to Information (RTI) Act apart from enquiring at various levels, including the office of the state chief information commissioner. But all these exercises proved futile.

“Soon after Soren became chief minister, his office booked some air tickets for Delhi, from me. But as soon as Soren lost his chair, the payment was forgotten,” said Ram Prasad Jalan, owner of Garima Air Travels.

Jalan said he made several rounds of the chief minister’s secretariat seeking the payment of the dues, but it was not made. He has to get Rs 50,000 from the government for his tickets.

Soren had been installed the chief minister for nine days after the last Assembly elections in 2005. He resigned after he could not prove his majority in the Assembly.

Jalan was recalling his plight at a jan sunwai (public hearing) organised jointly by Jharkhand Right to Information Forum (Ranchi) and Media, Information and Communication Centre of India (Delhi) (MICCI) on the premises of Vikas Bharati, an NGO, here on Saturday.

He asked the chief minister’s secretariat on April 19, 2007, under RTI Act as to when he would get the payment.

“The secretariat said that the payment would be made within a year,” said Jalan.

Later, he also placed an application at the office of the state chief information commissioner inquiring as to why the payment was not being made. Ironically, the one-year time span given by the chief minister’s secretariat for Jalan’s payments has elapsed, but he is yet to receive the money.

Sunil Mahto, a young man of Silli block in Ranchi district, had sought information under RTI in 2007 as to which were the roads that had been constructed in the region during 2004-05 and how much money had been spent.

“The PWD officers informed me that a total of Rs 62 crore had been paid to the contractors concerned for the construction of Bundu-Rahe-Pantahazam and three other small road stretches,” said Mahto.