The Noose Tightens

After a top IAS officer is arrested, the spotlight is on bureaucratic corruption

The CBI arrest of 1988 batch IAS officer B.L. Agarwal has shaken things up in Raipur where the general impression is that the bureaucracy rather than the political executive calls the shots. The case is significant because this is perhaps the first time a top official from the state has been arrested. Chhattisgarh’s bureaucracy is often in the news for the wrong reasons. There have been plenty of allegations of corruption, but action has always been restricted to the small fry. The high-profile Public Distribution System racket unearthed by the state’s anti-corruption bureau (ACB) after searches at the premises of the officials of the state Civil Supplies Corporation steered clear of the big names. An IPS officer from Chhattisgarh cadre, Raj K. Dewangan, was compulsorily retired, but that seems to have been prompted by the Centre under its system of review, rather than the state government.

No stranger to controversy, Agarwal, who was till recently principal secBuddha

retary, higher education, was subjected to an investigation by the income tax department in 2010. It proved to be only a temporary setback—Agarwal was suspended, but later cleared in an inquiry by the state Economic Offences Wing (EOW)—and went on to pick up his next promotion too.

The present CBI cases are from the time Agarwal was health secretary. The CBI claims he had struck a deal with a tout, Bhagwan Singh, who in turn put him in touch with one ‘Burhanuddin’ with ‘contacts in the PMO’ to get the two cases against him being probed by the agency transferred to the state EOW. A sum of Rs 1.5 crore was apparently agreed on, but it seems Agarwal could only pay Rs 60 lakh in cash through hawala. Subsequently, the agency says the middlemen agreed to get paid in 2 kg of gold that Agarwal sent through his brotherinlaw Anand.

On February 18, the CBI searched the premises of Agarwal and his

AGARWAL WAS SUSPENDED IN 2010 BUT THE STATE EOW LATER CLEARED HIM AFTER AN INQUIRY

brotherinlaw in Raipur. The premises of Bhagwan Singh and Burhanuddin who go by the aliases O.P. Singh and O.P. Sharma respectively were also searched in Noida and Hyderabad. Agarwal was called for interrogation and just when it seemed he would walk away (the seizures at his premises had not yielded much), he was arrested on February 21. The state government then suspended him. Searches at other places linked to the bribery scandal yielded about Rs 20 lakh cash and 2 kg gold, said the CBI.

The question for the Raman Singh government is: why is the state EOW the goto agency for those seeking relief in corruption cases?