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| Edited By: Abhilash Khandekar |Source: DNA |Updated: Feb 16, 2011, 11:39 PM IST
A chief minister on a hunger strike? That is what happened in Madhya Pradesh last week, when the CM sat on an anshan (fast), claiming discrimination by the UPA-led central government.
Shivraj Singh Chauhan, the first non-Congress CM to complete five years in office in MP, is not known for being confrontational. But last month, he took everyone by surprise when he declared at a BJP event that he would sit on an anshan. He said the Centre was neglecting MP’s legitimate demands for compensation to farmers, leaving him little choice.
“In the federal system of governance, this is quite unprecedented!” quipped a senior bureaucrat.
Shivraj’s repeated requests to Delhi and to PM Manmohan Singh had yielded little. The MP government has demanded a preliminary compensation package of Rs2,200 crore for its farmers. Clearly, what MP got (as assurance) was miniscule.
The state has been rocked by a series of suicides by farmers, a la Vidarbha, and which has the administration completely jittery. As many as 34 farmers ended their lives over two months. The RSS-backed Bhartiya Kisan Sangh even laid siege to Bhopal in December, demanding immediate redressal of farmers’ problems.
And as the CM nearly went on the fast on February 13, an embarrassed prime minister’s office swung into action and through the governor managed to dissuade Singh from actually sitting on his fast. The Centre quickly announced the forming of a high-level committee under Montek Singh Ahluwalia to address MP’s anxieties.
Everyone was happy: the BJP for drawing the Congress-led central government’s attention; and the UPA that the CM could be won over.
Corruption in bureaucracy
A backward state like MP has been consistently making news for the wrong reasons. The bureaucracy is accused of making a quick buck at the cost of poor people. Following an income-tax department raid on an IAS couple — Arvind and Tinoo Joshi (1979 batch) — last year, a large number of government officials have been trapped by different anti-corruption agencies.
These actions have yielded huge amount of cash and jewellery, shocking people and investigating agencies.
The Joshi couple, former health director Rajesh Rajora and former industry corporation chief SR Mohanty top the list of corrupt IAS officers in MP. Bureaucracy watchers say there are many more tainted officers who are minting money, as the state watches helplessly.
While Joshi and Rajora were suspended, Mohanty, a 1982 batch officer, is involved in a Rs700-crore industry scam during Digvijay Singh regime. The Supreme Court recently set aside a high court order quashing an FIR against Mohanty.
