Radiance Weekly: Honesty is the Worst Policy Nitish Exorcises His Excise Minister for Being Upright
The product of plus and minus is always minus. In the den of the corrupt and (power)-drunk it is virtually impossible to bring in sanity and honesty. But the sacked minister of excise of Bihar, Jamshed Ashraf, tried to do so only to be thrown out in the street.
On February 18 he became the first minister of Bihar to be dismissed – even before he submitted his resignation – after many years, and that too for exposing corruption in the chief minister Nitish Kumar’s secretariat.
Jamshed has certainly earned a lot of support and sympathy in his campaign as he was considered the only minister in the Nitish Kumar cabinet, who is honest. In fact he never lived in the ministerial bungalow nor has he taken state’s money for air trips. Though originally from Begusarai in Bihar, Jamshed has a big business in Mumbai and started living in Patna regularly only after becoming a minister.
Now even many ardent admirers of Nitish Kumar have started admitting that he is heading the most corrupt government since independence with bureaucrats ruling the roost and media, for their own business interest – read advertisement – showering praise on him. But then Jamshed needs to answer a few questions too.
Being the chairman of the Bihar Haj Committee, enjoying ministerial status, what prompted him to accept the excise portfolio? When Maulana Nizamuddin of All India Muslim Personal Law Board and Imarat-e-Shari’ah counselled him not to take up the portfolio both he and Nitish Kumar pooh-poohed the respected religious leader by stating that there is nothing un-Islamic in it.
Whatever may be his argument for joining this ministry on April 13, 2008 the truth is that he fell into the well-laid strategy. I repeatedly wrote about it in different magazines. Ever since the Nitish Kumar government introduced New Excise Policy on July 1, 2007 to boost up the state exchequer it was in search of a teetotaller as the minister and departmental secretary. It needs to be mentioned that new wine shops came up in almost every village panchayat and locality of Bihar in no time. Its number increased manifold, a large number of them illegal. Throwing all norms and rules to the wind wine shops cropped up near mosques, mandirs, schools, hostels, hospitals, etc. In many places the local people resisted the move, only to be booked in false cases. One vivid example is of Ramna Road in the heart of Patna, where a wine shop came up just in front of a girls’ hostel and stone throw distance away from a mosque.
The only sector where the state witnessed rise in revenue in the last couple of years is the excise taxes, but at great social cost. Corruption increased manifold so did the crime, but the Press remained silent.
To hide the rampant corruption Nitish in the beginning made Sudha Srivastava, a woman, Gandhian and niece of Lok Nayak Jay Prakash Narayan excise minister. And the Excise Secretary of the state was none else but Amir Subhani, the 1987 batch IAS topper of India. Newspapers of Bihar on the eve of the implementation of New Excise Policy on July 1, 2007 carried photos of woman minister and a Muslim IAS with flowing beard – he is associated with Tablighi Jamaat – explaining to the newsmen the good thing about the new government move and how the state exchequer will go up.
Then on April 13, 2008 Nitish made a cabinet reshuffle and appointed Jamshed Ashraf excise minister, while Subhani continued to be the departmental secretary. The plan was simple: since these gentlemen are ‘religious’ Muslims and would not take any interest in the liquor business it would give the mafia a free hand to loot and get anything passed.
A year later, in 2009, Subhani was made Home Secretary of Bihar and in his place a young IAS officer, N Vijaylakshmi, was made the Excise Secretary. Her husband S Siddharth is the Secretary to the Chief Minister.
Jamshed directly charges Vijaylakshmi and the Joint Commissioner of the Excise Department with rampant corruption. He also said that earlier her predecessor, Amir Subhani, and the chief secretary, Anup Mukherjee over-ruled his objections on certain files and subsequently took the Chief Minister’s consent.
The big question is as to how this all came to light, as in Bihar no print media is prepared to write anything against the Chief Minister. The reason is at least 7-8 fold increase in the state government advertisements to newspapers. On November 24 every year advertisements worth millions of rupees are given to newspapers as it was on this very date in 2005 that Nitish became the Chief Minister.
In the last three years only the Public Relations Department, not to speak of other departments of the Bihar government, had spent Rs 80 crore on advertisement. An RTI activist got this information after much difficulty. Once again no newspaper carried this news. Only ETV Bihar and bihartimes.com, a news portal, did highlight the news as they do not have to care much about the government advertisements.
Whenever any newspaper did dare and write something independently the advertisements are stopped and the concerned journalist rebuked by the management. In one case a journalist was even sacked as he wrote something good about Lalu Prasad’s then railway ministry. A Resident Editor left for job outside Bihar and another journalist too did the same. A senior Hindi journalist working in a newspaper in UP refused to join when he was offered a job in Bihar as Deputy Resident Editor.
Then how did all the news about scam came into the light. The truth is that Jamshed wrote a letter to the Chief Secretary pointing out large scale corruption on September 16, 2009. As nothing happened, he handed over a nine-page letter to the Chief Minister personally on January 14 last cabinet meeting, which took place in a floating restaurant, M V Ganga Vihar. Once again nothing happened.
However, after January 14 the Bihar government for the fifth time stopped the advertisement to Dainik Jagaran as it carried a story, which was not liked by the Chief Minister. The management begged for forgiveness but the government refused to give advertisement. All this was reported in a Delhi-based news-portal on media called bhadas4media.com.
When all efforts failed, Dainik Jagaran on February 12 carried an eight-column banner headline exposing the letter written by Jamshed Ashraf to the Chief Minister on January 14. This came as a bolt from the blue. While Hindustan Times followed the story, its Hindi edition Dainik Hindustan did not do any follow-up story. The Times of India, the group, which gave Business Reformer of the Year 2009 award to Nitish Kumar completely blacked out the whole episode till the sacking of Jamshed on February 18. However, the local television channels, such as ETV Bihar, Sahara Samay and news portal bihartimes.com started playing up the story. The Bihar government as a damage limitation exercise started releasing advertisement to Dainik Jagaran, but by then it was too late. Jamshed, on his part, denied that he leaked the letter out to the media.
The corruption in Excise Department is just a tip of the iceberg. Charges of scams in road construction, flood relief, health department, education, NREGA, etc. are now being levelled not by any opposition or the media but by Nitish’s closest friends.
The state unit Janata Dal United chief, Lallan Singh, quit the post citing autocratic style of functioning of the Chief Minister and bureaucratic highhandedness. The strange aspect is that barring Monazir Hassan, a party MP, no senior leader came in support of Nitish Kumar on Jamshed issue.
Jamshed has learnt his bitter lesson the hard way. His political journey from Zam Zam (he was the former chairman of the Haj Committee) to liquor came to an end. Let us see how he fares in his next innings. But one thing is clear: he went down in the history as the first minister to be dismissed in Bihar simply because he dared to expose corruption at the top most level in the state. He still insists a probe into this scam by the CBI, Vigilance or Accountant General.
The Bihar Times: Jamshaid Ashraf – A Politician with a Difference
(BiharTimes): The axed Bihar minister for excise, Jamshaid Ashraf who created a storm by directly accusing the chief minister’s secretariat of being involved in corruption is relatively new to the game of politics.
Being made up of a different stuff his entry in politics too was somewhat accidental. In 2004 he met the Lok Janshakti Party leader, Ram Vilas Paswan in a plane. Paswan was impressed by him and invited him to join politics. A month later he went to meet the LJP leader. He offered him a ticket as assembly election in Bihar was due in February 2005.
Jamshaid, who was not much familiar with the ground realities of Bihar had difficulty in selecting the assembly constituency. However, his friends chose Balia in Begusarai as he hailed from that district.
Jamshaid lost by a slender margin to Shri Narayan Yadav of RJD who happened to be a minister too. The election campaign was a new experience for this industrialist-turn-politician and provided him a lot of opportunity to learn.
The defeat, however, did not deter him from doing social service and he fulfilled promises made during the campaign. He personally got installed five hand pumps in every panchayat of the constituency.
Jamshaid could not digest the slogan of Muslim chief minister for Bihar, then raised by Ram Vilas Paswan as it could never have been an election issue in India. In the meantime Janata Dal United leader, Nitish Kumar, got in touch with him and invited him to his party. He was offered ticket for October-November 2005 Assembly election from the same Balia seat. He won this time. He was not keen on becoming minister of excise deptt. and joined the office after 10 days. He told BiharTimes – “the bureaucrats thought that I would spend most of the time in Mumbai, where my family still lives. But after becoming minister I proved a hard nut to crack for them.”
He reiterated that he never lived in the ministerial bungalow or took money from the government for air trips. “I do not even introduce myself to people in my neighbourhood in Mumbai that I am a minister.”
Jamshaid had his schooling from St Michael High School, Patna. He then shifted to C M College, Darbhanga, for college education. He then did Aeronautical Engineering from Cochin.
After doing his graduation he worked at the Kolkata airport, then in Air India in the same city before he shifted to Mumbai.
The 1954-born Jamshaid left the job and plunged into business. He soon became a successful entrepreneur owning a no. of companies right from hospitality to container transport. Currently, he is the chairman of Pearl group of companies with more than 110 crore annual turn over.
His wife is a practising Aromatherapist, managing her own premium spa – Panacea , located at Hiranandani in Mumbai.
Father of two sons, one doing MBA in Oxford and the other doing graduation in Sydney, Jamshaid is the owner of two hotels in Kolkata and Pearl O2, a restaurant in Mumbai.
He has visited almost all the countries of Asia except Pakistan before becoming a minister. However, he got an opportunity to visit Pakistan too where he represented his State in a delegation.
He loves cars and has a fleet of nine vehicles, which include, Pajero and Prado.
When asked, will he continue in politics any more, he replied, “Why not. Politics is one of the most powerful medium to trigger change and express your own opinion”. “Bihar politics too need some professionals and well established politicians who could afford to be in politics not for making money” added Ashraf.
The Hindu: Bihar Minister hints at scam, embarrasses Nitish Govt.
Patna: In an embarrassment for Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, already facing dissension in the party, State Excise Minister Jamshaid Ashraf has shot off letters to him hinting at a “multi-crore scam” in the department.
In September 2009 and again on January 14, Mr. Ashraf handed over letters to the Chief Minister seeking his intervention in unearthing a “possible big scam”.
Alleging that the scam was committed in connivance with officers posted in the Chief Minister’s secretariat and the Excise Department, Mr. Ashraf said it might have resulted in revenue loss to the tune of a whopping over Rs. 500 crore.
The Minister suggested “a possible scam” related to awarding of contracts for manufacturing and distributing country liquor, sale of molasses to Uttar Pradesh and fixation of price for Indian Made Foreign Liquor by the State Beverage Corporation.
With the contents of the letter making way to the media, Mr. Kumar is apparently in a spot, as the Opposition grabbed the opportunity to try to sully his image of a clean and no-nonsense man, especially an election year.
Accusing the Chief Minister and his secretariat of trying to “cover up” the scam, the main Opposition RJD-LJP combine has demanded a CBI probe and immediate resignation of Mr. Kumar on moral grounds.
The development has come at a time when the ruling party is grappling with a defiant State JD(U) chief Rajiv Ranjan Singh ‘Lalan’ who had quit the post raising the issue of internal democracy in the party.
In the letter to Kumar and Chief Secretary Anup Mukherjee, Ashraf has sought a probe by the Vigilance Department or the Accountant General into the ‘scam’.
Mr. Kumar, on the other hand, maintained that there was nothing to hide and people would come to know about the facts related to the matter soon.
“There is nothing to hide about it and the people will definitely come to know about it soon,” the Chief Minister said when contacted.
On the charges of “cover-up”, Mr. Kumar said, “There is none on the earth who could purchase me…my political career has remained clean and will remain clean.”
Last year, Mr. Ashraf had a showdown with former Excise Commissioner N. Vijalakshmi over the allotment of contracts to spirit manufacturers. Ms. Vijalakshmi’s husband S. Sidharth is currently Secretary to the Chief Minister.
In the letter, Ashraf, who was unavailable for comment, alleged that some of the “blacklisted” firms were awarded contracts for manufacturing and distributing country liquor last year for three years till 2012 without conforming to rules and guidelines.
He said money exchanged hands in award of contract for distribution of country liquor to a JD(U) leader which was done against the norms.
The other allegations pertain to the undermining of minister’s authority with Mr. Ashraf claiming that he had always been kept in the dark on important policy decisions, including the awarding of contract to liquor manufacturers and firms supplying spirit to Bihar.
The Minister claimed the decision to sell molasses to Uttar Pradesh at a ‘low’ rate of Rs 13 per kg and later, purchasing molasses at a ‘higher’ price from it was done without his consent.
“Even the files for raising the price of IMFL were not shown to me. It is humiliation and reflects the unbridled powers of the bureaucrats in my department,” the Minister said in the letter.
He expressed surprise that the Chief Secretary did not recommend a vigilance probe even after receiving his letter in September 2009.
“None other than the Excise Minister has highlighted existence of the scam involving Rs 500 crore and it is unfortunate that Chief Minister and others sat over the Minister’s recommendations,” RJD spokesman Shakeel Ahmed Khan said.
“The loot of public money can’t be tolerated… it could not have been possible without the knowledge of the Chief Minister,” Mr. Khan said. Alleging the involvement of officials in the CM’s secretariat in the ‘scam’, Mr. Khan said, “It is high time that the Chief Minister comes forward and recommends a CBI probe.”