Will Jharkhand Chief minister Raghubar Das be able to clean the Augean stables of the land mutation mafia? He suspended a Jharkhand Administrative Services official posted at Ranchi sadar revenue circle office on Thursday evening for alleged corruption. He has asked South Chotanagpur commissioner for an inquiry against others, and this has the babus in the land revenue office ‘shaken and stirred’.

CM Das suspended Jharkhand Administrative Services official Praveen Prakash, the circle officer (CO) of Ranchi sadar for irregularities in mutation work. He has directed South Chotanagpur commissioner K.K. Khandelwal to hunt for those revenue employees posted here who are part of network of corruption. Mr Khandelwal has to submit the report to the government in a month.

A local journalist commented that words like Lakshmi Puja, chadhawa, maal pani, paan-cigarette and mithai, all mundane euphemisms for bribes, could not be heard along the corridors of the revenue office on Friday.

The usual band of touts also vanished, and clerks and babus cast ‘suspicious looks’ at visitors while discussing who would be guillotined next for corruption.

The Ranchi sadar revenue circle office covers 38 revenue villages or mouzas. 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 indicted Prakash, a second-class gazetted officer, declined to specify the nature of graft allegations against the man, but justified the government’s action.

“I found thousands of land mutation files pending under the charge of the CO (Prakash). Though mutation applications were spilling over from a couple of years (Prakash was posted last year), an incumbent official must dispose of 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.

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.

The local edition of the Telegraph newspaper, cites an interesting case study (printed here):

“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 had 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.

  crime, Jharkhand