Vijay Shankar Dubey. Tough taskmaster

Ranchi, June 28: President’s rule may well be a boon for mega investors who have been hit by frequent political turmoil in the state.

A high-level committee has been constituted under the chairmanship of adviser to the governor Vijay Shankar Dubey, to clear the bottlenecks holding back various projects for years.

The committee, which will comprise senior bureaucrats as its members, will meet every month to identify the bottlenecks and speed up the projects. The first meeting is to be held on July 6.

The initiative is in contrast to the stand taken by former Governor K. Sankaranarayanan, who chose to skip the issues involving mega industrial projects, keeping them pending for an elected government to deal with.

“My road map is clear. My thrust is to clear all pending projects involving mines, roads, land, law and order etc,” Dubey, who retired as the first chief secretary of the state in July 2002, told The Telegraph in an exclusive interview.

“Moreover, I have set a deadline for the officials to decide the pending proposals either way on merit by July 15. It is ridiculous to find files dated 2005 still coming to me,” he said.

Dubey, who holds the important portfolios of finance, industries, personnel, cabinet vigilance, mines and geology, energy, road construction, building construction, forest and environment, revenue and land reforms etc, said the Raj Bhavan has set October 31 as the deadline for holding long due panchayat elections in the state.

“We will have to finetune the date according to the Commonwealth Games, which begins on October 3 and ends on October 14 in Delhi, as we may not get the requisite central paramilitary forces for holding the elections during the period,” he said.

The governor’s adviser said he was going to ensure that the new railway projects were completed within a year.

“We have no dearth of funds. We have already released Rs 250 crore and will release more for pending projects. Lack of money is used as an excuse to delay projects,” he claimed.

The Babulal Marandi government had signed a MoU with the railway ministry in February 2002 when Dubey was the chief secretary. The new rail projects envisaged an investment of Rs 2,000 crore and were supposed to be completed by 2007. Incidentally, the project cost has been escalated to Rs. 3,292 crore from Rs 2000 crore. The railway projects are Ranchi-Hazaribagh-Koderma, Koderma-Giridih, Deoghar-Dumka, Dumka-Rampurhat and Koderma-Tilaiya.

Under the agreement, the state was to share two-third of the final completion cost with the balance being borne by the ministry of railways. Marandi fulfilled the promise and immediately released Rs 421 crore, but the subsequent chief ministers did not toe his line and insisted that the railway ministry contribute 50 per cent of the cost.

Dubey also reiterated that the corrupt would not survive President’s rule.

“We have already moved to strengthen the state vigilance bureau and equip it with two more SPs, six DSPs and 16 inspectors from among retired CBI officers. Once the bureau is strengthened, the old pending cases will be investigated and taken to their logical conclusions,” he promised.

On the public distribution system, the adviser said district supply officers and other required officials had been posted in every district.