Patna: LJP president Ramvilas Paswan on Tuesday
charged the state`s NDA government with passing the buck on
river Bagmati breaching its embankment in Bihar`s Sitamarhi
district, to former Governor Buta Singh, and called for a CBI
probe into the allegations related to the breach.
"The state government maintained that the administration
under President`s rule in Bihar when Buta Singh was Governor
was responsible for assigning the job to an undeserving firm
for repair and strengthening works on river Bagmati`s
embankment that breached, but Singh denied the charge," Paswan
told reporters here.
Stating that the MoU on the Bagmati Flood Management
Project was signed by the state Water Resources Department and
the Hindustan Steel Works Construction Limited (HSCL) on
December 19, 2005, but the first expenditure clearance for the
Rs 798 crore project was given on April 10, 2008, Paswan said
the period of signing of the agreement and the date of
clearance for the first expenditure raised fingers over the
role of the Nitish Kumar government, he said.
Noting that the NDA led by Nitish Kumar came to power
on November 24, 2005, Paswan said it appeared that the state
government was "responsible" for assigning the contract
works to the HSCL, which allegedly has not not much of
experience in the field of Flood Management project.
Paswan said Buta Singh was still holding a constitutional
post being National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NSCS)
Chairman and his statement `blaming the Nitish Kumar
government on allotment of works should not be overlooked."
Bihar`s NDA government had ordered a high-level probe
into allotment of Rs 900 crore project of constructing river
embankment which breached in Sitamarhi to the HSCL.
Water Resources Minister Virendra Yadav had said the
embankment construction work on the Bagmati river was given to
Hindustan Steelworks Construction Limited (HSCL), in 2005,
when Bihar was under President`s Rule and Singh was the
Governor of the state.
"It is surprising that the work was awarded to the HSCL
on nomination basis despite the fact that it had no no prior
experience of constructing embankments," Yadav told PTI.
It came to the notice of the state government when the
embankment of Bagmati breached in a stretch of 200 metres at
Tilak Tajpur in Sitamarhi on August one, affecting people of
eight panchayats under Sunnisayedpur block.
Claiming that the work was given to the company without
floating tenders, the minister said, "We don`t want to take
the blame for the mistake committed by others."
Yadav said that the state government ordered setting up
of a high-level inquiry panel comprising of technical experts
to look into the detailed project report formulated by the
HSCL as well as the actual work done.
Bureau Report
