The cold reception
The cold reception to the recently tabled Comptroller Auditor General of India report in Nagaland Legislative Assembly is a big disappointment pushing Nagaland forward to the endless corruptions period in contemporary reality of Nagaland. Furthermore, taking stock of the situation; the indifferent attitude and response of the suffering public, anti-corruption organizations, activists to CAG report shows the aftermath effect of the people being used to corrupt way of life for a long time.
CAG report and what next
After the CAG audit report was tabled in the NLA on September 20, CAG have recommended investigations by the State Vigilance Commission and disciplinary proceedings/FIR against the concerned officials for the non-existent yet doubtful completed projects amounting to Rs. 6.68 crores. The CAG has even produced photographs of incomplete project works, which is a prima facie case and require early investigation.
In such critical times, can State Vigilance commission as an autonomous body perform its mission with honesty, integrity and sincerity as described in its mission statement that the State Vigilance Commission is no longer a mere advisory body but acts as the force to counter all sophisticated white collar crimes in govt. departments. Two points of SVC mission statement is given below for public consumption:
- SVC mission is to contain or if possible to weed out corruption from all govt. establishment.
- To develop the commission and to act as the watchdog of the govt. In order to bring about transparency and accountability in govt. functioning.
In spite of unsatisfactory past records, time has come for SVC to live up to sincerely perform its given task.
What I see for now
The govt. may perhaps try to delay the investigations, perhaps not, the opposition party in their right mind will not pressurise the govt. to recommend CBI probe into the valid allegations of GAG reports, that we all know for sure, SVC may or may not give serious effort to book, punish the top bureaucrats, govt. employees of different grade, powerful legislators responsible for the anomalies and irregularities to deliver justice to the suffering Nagaland citizens, Gauhati Court may or may not take suomoto intervention on the anomalies and irregularities detected by the CAG of India, anti-corruption organizations, activists, lawyers, public spirited person may perhaps file PIL in Gauhati High Court demanding CBI enquiry, perhaps not, organizations may organize public rally or may not.
The indispensable role of Judiciary and Media in Nagaland
Judiciary (bar and bench) and Media in Nagaland has to tune in to the words of 46th Chief Justice of India RanjanGogoi, who says that, independent judges and noisy journalist are democracy’s first line of defence, with modification- not only independent judges and noisy journalists, but even independent journalists and sometime noisy judges. Only revitalized judiciary and media can bail out Nagaland from its corrupt epoch.
On March 2018, RJD Chief and Bihar former chief minister Lalu Prasad were sentenced to 14 years in jail in the fourth fodder scam case. The fifth case, related to the fraudulent withdrawal of Rs.139 Crore from Dorandra treasury is still pending with court, which means if found guilty in fifth case his prison sentence will increase.
Brief background check on Fodder scam: few extracts from the article, “All you need to know about the 21 year old case against Lalu Prasad Yadav”, published by FIRSTPOST dt. Dec 23, 2017, goes like this, the petty forgeries and small scale fraudulent transactions, that would go on to become a Rs.100-crore scam and unseat an incumbent chief minister, predates the Lalu-era in Bihar. It was first sniffed out in 1985 by the then CAG Mr.TN Chaturvedi, who noticed that monthly accounts submission from Bihar treasury were always delayed. However, those small-scale falsified transaction flourished over the course of years, got systemised, and snowballed into a Rs.945-crore scam. After the 1985 incident, the case resurfaced in a big way for the first time in 1996 when the State Finance SecretaryMr. VS Dubey (A 1966-batch IAS officer) started looking into the matter and ordered inspections across all districts. A massive raid on the Animal Husbandry Department at Chaibasa uncovered a stash of documents showing illegal withdrawals from the state treasury. As the issue started gathering heat as the scam unravelled, BJP state unit chief SushilModi filed PIL in the Patna High Court in 1997 demanding CBI enquiry in the case. The same year, the investigation was handed over to the CBI and hence started Lalu’s worst nightmare and a longstanding episode with the CBI. On 23 June, 1997 the CBI named Lalu Prasad Yadav as one of the accused, which subsequently forced him to step down from the post of the chief minister leading to the current fate. As things stand today, of the 64 cases, Yadav has been as accused in six cases.
From reading various reports of Bihar fodder scam cases, it is clear that the joint effort of different personalities from govt. sector, political parties, judiciary, media, activism etc. played a decisive role in curbing the decade’s old corrupt practices in functioning style of Bihar govt. and putting the guilty ones like Lalu Prasad Yadav and several others behind bar. If citizens of Nagaland want a corrupt free Nagaland, only a serious joint effort can accomplish such herculean task and time is ripe to see the repeat of Laloo’s case happening in Nagaland to many Nagaland Laloos.
Endnote: to begin the process of creating new corrupt less Nagaland, people must first learn to think as a democratic citizen and behave as a citizen of a democratic state and not as fanatic member of clan, village and tribe to avoid unnecessary compromise on well planned and systematic corruptions.
