Chief minister Raghubar Das, who suspended a Jharkhand Administrative Services official posted at Ranchi sadar revenue circle office on Thursday evening for alleged corruption and asked South Chotanagpur commissioner for an inquiry against others, has sent shockwaves in the office.
Besides suspending Jharkhand Administrative Services official Praveen Prakash, the circle officer (CO) of Ranchi sadar for irregularities in mutation work, Das directed South Chotanagpur commissioner K.K. Khandelwal to probe revenue employees posted here who are alleged to be part of network of corruption. The report is to be submitted to the government in a month.
So, words like Lakshmi Puja, chadhawa, maal pani, paan-cigarette and mithai, all spiritual and mundane euphemisms for bribes, vanished from the corridors on Friday.
So did touts, as clerks and babus cast suspicious looks at visitors while discussing who would be guillotined next for corruption.
Ranchi sadar revenue circle office covers 38 revenue villages or mouzas and it deals with land related issues, right from mutation - transfer and rejection of land ownership - to fixing and collecting land tax, measuring land, verifying its authenticity and nature, all jobs with big stake and money involved.
Khandelwal, who held the inquiry against Prakash, a second-class gazetted officer, declined to specify the nature of graft allegations against him, but justified why the government took strong action.
"I found thousands of land mutation files pending under the charge of the CO (Prakash). Though mutation applications were piling over from a couple of years (Prakash was posted last year), an incumbent official must dispose them. Important files were traceless from official records. Also, I found many undated files, some with backdated signatures, records tampered with and information about number of pending files wrongly furnished," Khandelwal said.
As a simple instance, Khandelwal in the report submitted to the government said 4,744 and 3,819 mutation applications were pending at the office during fiscal years 2014-15 and 2013-14, respectively.
But, Prakash, in his reports, claimed only 1,205 mutation applications were pending till March 2015, the number dwindling to 448 in June.
To set the record straight, according to state government norms, an application for land mutation must be cleared in a maximum of 45 days from the date of submission of the application. The government doesn't charge any fee for the service.
The office also had no record of 9,375 cases of land mutation, Khandelwal's report said.
"This office is a den of corruption," said civil court lawyer Kamlesh Kumar Singh who came to seek the status of land mutation applications of two of his clients Ashok Richard and Alfred Nagdua, residents of Kanta Toli and Bahu Bazar, who applied in 2013.
In Richard's case, Prakash's office apparently lied to the chief minister's office. When his application was not processed, Richard lodged complaint at chief minister's complaint cell this September, but in his reply to the chief minister, the CO's office said the work was done.
Lawyer Md Islam, who came to seek mutation status of his clients Md Yahiya and Harun Rashid, said files were missing. "I charge Rs 2,000 each from my clients but revenue employees demand Rs 20,000 from me. No one fears a lawyer. You pay at least Rs 5,000 as bribe for mutation, which can rise to a lakh."
RTI activist Sunil Oraon, who fights for tribal land, added that rivals often bribe officials to conceal or destroy files. "You can't imagine the quantum of corruption," he said.
