What FIRs say on IAS officer who excluded 19 lakh citizens from Assam NRC list

By Nava Thakuria*
Another first information report (FIR) has been lodged against the former State coordinator of National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the system integrator, sub-contractors with other persons alleging corruption and money laundering while updating the NRC in Assam that began in 2014 under supervision of the Supreme Court of India.
The petitioner Hitesh Dev Sarma, present NRC State coordinator, has filed the case against Prateek Hajela, an IAS officer currently posted in his home State of Madhya Pradesh, in the State vigilance and anti-corruption department on June 13, 2022.
Dev Sarma, also an IAS officer, claims in the complaint that a huge corruption and money laundering suspectedly took place during the tenure of Hajela in the process of NRC updation. For conducting the updation of NRC programme, the system integrator (Wipro) was given the task of supplying data entry operators (DEOs).
The system integrator was not permitted to subcontract any activities related to system design and development, deployment and enhancement of NRC software solution, data centre operation, etc. However, it engaged one sub-contractor for providing data entry operators without any prior approval from the concerned authority.
“From office record, it was found that the then State coordinator was aware of the fact that a sub-contractor was being used to provide DEOs”, though he did not officially approve the particular proposal. The system integrator was paid Rs 14,500 to 17,500 per month per DEO by the NRC authority, but “the DEOs got only Rs 5,500 to 9,100 per month” only during the years (2015 to 2019).
Dev Sarma in his complaint wrote that the DEOs were denied the minimum wage as per the country’s Minimum Wages Act. The State Accountant General in a provisional audit report observed that “the difference of margin ranged from 45.59 to 64.27 percent was exorbitant and audit assessed that undue benefit of Rs 155.83 crore was allowed to SI/labour contractor after allowing 10 percent reasonable profit margin to the contractor”, added the complaint.
Narrating about the undue benefit to the tune of Rs 155.83 crore, Dev Sarma asserted that it’s a huge amount and it is reasonable to suspect that kickbacks and money laundering must have occurred in the process. He also mentioned that during his investigation it came to light that one Proloy Seal worked as a middleman in the whole process.

Dev Sarma

“He (Proloy Seal) was neither an employee of the office of the State coordinator nor was he a contractor engaged by the office. But his presence was always seen in the office. It is suspected that he was the key person in managing all the kickbacks and money laundering. A detailed investigation into the transactions, accounts/balance sheets of the persons involved is likely to prove corruption and money laundering as suspected,” stated in the FIR.
The provisional audit report also identified an “avoidable expenditure to the tune of Rs 10.73 crore” in connection with the engagement of third-party monitoring consultants. As per the amended delegation of financial power rules, for the expenditure of more than Rs 5 crore, the then State coordinator should have obtained an approval from the empowered committee, headed by the chief secretary, or from the Registrar General of India. But the then State coordinator engaged the consultants without taking approval from the concerned authority, added it.Citing the same audit report, where it observed that “entire expenditure of Rs 10.73 crore made against the engagement of consultants was unjustified and avoidable which resulted extra burden to the government exchequer and undue benefit to the SI to that extent”, Dev Sarma claimed that a large volume of government money was siphoned off in a fraudulent manner.
Unconfirmed reports indicate that a few editor-journalists were also beneficiaries to the financial irregularities. Those media persons, precisely from news channels, took sub-contracts to supply DEOs and got a sizable percentage of money which is mentioned in Dev Sarma’s complaint. It is understood that the share of due money to the DEOs were fraudulently grabbed by those television anchor-journalists. People of Assam may remember how some television-show presenters at that time projected Hajela as a superman.
Mentionable is that Dev Sarma earlier lodged a complaint with the criminal investigation department of Assam Police against his predecessor Hajela for deceitfully including names of suspected individuals (read Bangladeshi nationals) in the NRC. He termed it as criminal and anti-national activities where Hajela deliberately used the software designed to avoid quality checks in the NRC updating exercise for Assam.
The supplementary NRC list, which was released on August 31, 2019, excluded 19,06,657 applicants because of lack of adequate citizenship papers.
---
*Guwahati-based senior journalist

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Counterview

Search This Blog