Ranchi: Around 400 JVM supporters staged a dharna in front of Raj Bhavan on Tuesday demanding acting against chief secretary Rajbala Verma and two senior IAS officers in connection with an alleged mining scam.
They threatened to disrupt business at the secretariats if the Raghubar Das government failed to take punitive measures against the bureaucrats by this week.
The JVM supporters were led by the party's Khunti district president Dilip Mishra who later submitted a memorandum to governor Droupadi Murmu.
"It has been nearly two we-eks since the PMO forwarded our complaint (sent two months ago) against Verma, state school and literacy mission secretary A.P. Singh and agriculture secretary Puja Singhal to the chief minister's principal secretary. But, there has been no action," Mishra said.
A letter dated January 25, forwarded by PMO under-secretary K.C. Raju, mentioned the JVM's complaint accusing Verma and Singh of bailing out Singhal who had allegedly transferred land illegally to private company, Usha Martin, for the Kathautia coal mining project when she was the deputy commissioner of Palamau in 2010-11 and sought appropriate action from the state government.
Then Palamau commissioner N.K. Mishra, whose probe had indicted Singhal, has availed voluntary retirement two days ago, which seems to have further agitated the JVM.
"We hope the governor will intervene and prompt the CMO to act. If all attempts fail, we will gherao the secretariat and prevent entry of bureaucrats," Mishra said.
Marandi salvo
JVM supremo Babulal Mara-ndi on Tuesday charged the BJP government of indulging in corruption. Marandi, who was in Dhanbad, said fresh cases of corruption, including the Rs11,400-crore PNB scam, were surfacing since the BJP government had come into power at the Centre.
Accusing the Union government of shielding the accused, he said, "The most surprising fact is that the main culprits of all the corruption cases, be it Vijay Mallya or Lalit Modi or Nirav Modi, are beyond the clutches of law."
Criticising central government, Marandi further said, "Senior ministers of the central government claim that Nirav Modi had taken loans even during the UPA regime. The question arises what was the BJP government doing between 2014 and 2018 over the case?" Marandi asked.
Training his guns at the state government, the former chief minister accused the Raghubar Das government of towing the same line.
"Chief minister Raghubar Das is sitting on the file of salt scam which took place in the state even as the probe reports have confirmed shoddiness with regard to the supply of salt," said Marandi.
