Ranchi: The third supplementary budget for the current fiscal was passed by the Assembly on Saturday amidst mounting pressure by the Opposition that iterated its demand for action against chief secretary Rajbala Verma, DGP D.K. Pandey and ADG Anurag Gupta.
Opposition MLAs based their attack on the government and Verma citing an old tweet by a senior banker, since deleted from his twitter handle, prompting the chief minister to promise a probe by the special branch. But, the Opposition wasn't pacified.
Parliamentary affairs minister Saryu Roy, in a letter to the chief minister on August 27, 2017, had told him that the then Indusind Bank corporate head, Adwait Hebbar, had tweeted on August 18. alleging that chief secretary Rajbala Verma was mounting pressure on him to invest in her son's company in return for settlement of bills pending with the state government.
Roy's letter, published on Saturday in a section of the media, requested Das to take cognisance of the tweet and take appropriate action.
Das, who had not acted on the letter till now, spoke in the Assembly on it on Saturday. "So far as my ministerial colleague's letter is concerned, the special branch would be probing the allegations therein," Das declared amidst protests by Opposition MLAs who pointed out that the CM's probe meant little since the special branch was headed by Anurag Gupta, against whom the Election Commission had recommended punitive action for allegedly influencing MLAs in BJP's favour during the 2016 Rajya Sabha polls.
Leader of the Opposition Hemant Soren quoted a popular saying to illustrate the way the government was trying to bail itself out of the controversy over the chief secretary. " Baap beta bana panch aur bail ka daam paanch aana (with a father-son duo mediating a property dispute, the price of an ox will be fixed at 30 paisa)," he said.
Later, Hemant told this correspondent that the government was trying to bail out Verma in the fodder scam case just like the way former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad had done. "Once the scam came to light, Lalu ordered probes by officials who were themselves alleged to be involved in the scam," Hemant said.
The day's session began with noisy protests by Opposition MLAs demanding a reply from the government on why the reservation roaster was not followed while finalising JPSC preliminary test results.
Ths JMM's Amit Mahto initiated an adjournment motion on the issue, but it was turned down by Speaker Dinesh Oraon.
The House was adjourned till 12.45om after a session of barely 10 minutes or so. Less than five minutes after MLAs convened, the House was adjourned till lunch. In the afternoon, the House was adjourned again till 3pm within seven minutes. Finally, the House was adjourned for the day after passing the third supplementary budget and completing other mandatory businesses within 10 minutes.
