Even BJP MInister has to face "Parivar" wrath for attending Iftar in MP | N.D.Sharma

Published on 18-09-2008 In General

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Even BJP MInister has to face "Parivar" wrath for attending Iftar in MP

Akhand Pratap Singh is an odd man out in Shivraj Singh Chauhan's cabinet. He holds the portfolios of food and civil supplies, consumer protection and minorities' welfare. When a Congress leader went to the Lokayukta with a complaint of corruption against him, he blamed it on his former secretary K.P.Singh who, according to the minister, is a Congress supporter. That should have made him a natural ally of the Sangh Parivar. But it did not. Rather, the Parivar activists of are now after his blood.

The minister's 'sin' was to attend a roza iftar at Chhatarpur against the 'advice' of the Sangh Parivar organisations. Singh is in charge of Chhatarpur district which adjoins his own district of Tikamgarh in the Bundelkhand region. Besides, he has been explaining to all and sundry, he happens to be in charge of the minorities' welfare and it is only natural that he should attend the important functions of the minorities when invited.

The Parivar activists are not amused. The minister's effigies were burnt. The local leaders of the VHP, Bajrang Dal, Dharma Jagaran Samiti, Bharat Mata Seva Samiti, Shriram Seva Samiti and some other Parivar-related organisations have announced that they will not allow Akhand Pratap Singh to enter Chhatarpur; and if he comes, his face will be blackened.

Interestingly, Congress leader K.K.Mishra's complaint to the Lokayukta against Akhand Pratap Singh includes an affidavit which a BJP activist from Singh's own district of Tikamgarh was said to have submitted to the chief minister alleging that Singh had taken Rs 80,000 from him with the promise of providing a job to his son. Vrindavan Yadav, the BJP activist of Vairvar village in Jatara tehsil, requested the chief minister in his affidavit (says the complaint to the Lokayukta) to prevail upon the food minister to return his money with interest.

Attending roza iftar by BJP leaders is not such a cardinal sin these days when the BJP is the ruling party in several States and is keen to have its own prime minister after next year's Lok Sabha elections. Party leaders, from Lal Krishna Advani to Shivraj Singh Chauhan, attend and organise roza iftar in the month of Ramzan. The reason behind the anger of the Parivar activists against the food minister lies elsewhere and they are apparently much too embarrassed to admit it publicly. It is unfortunate that they should try to take on Akhand Pratap Singh in a manner that threatens to vitiate communal harmony on the eve of the Assembly elections.

Singh, a seasoned politician, was included in the cabinet in August last year. He took his role as food and civil supplies minister a bit too seriously and started ordering raids on PDS shops against which there were complaints of malpractices, with a particular attention on his own Bundelkhand region. Most of these shops were run by the activists or supporters of the BJP. Singh's action, naturally, did not go well with the Parivar members.

The corruption case against Akhand Pratap Singh came as a bit of a surprise because he had always been known to be a fighter against corruption; those who aim at making money generally keep everybody, particularly the trouble-makers, in good humour. Then in the Congress, he was a Minister of State in Digvijay Singh's council of ministers, with independent charge of animal husbandry department. He identified some senior officials indulging in corruption and wrote to the chief minister seeking action against them.

Digvijay Singh, as was his wont, dropped Akhand Pratap Singh from the council of ministers, rather than disturb the bureaucrats accused of corruption.

As food minister in the present government, he not only annoyed the Parivar members by trying to check malpractices in the public distribution system (PDS), but also had a prolonged fight with K.P.Singh, secretary to the department. After the juicy details of the fight between the two started appearing in the media, Chauhan shifted K.P.Singh to another department.

K.K.Mishra's complaint to the Lokayukta cites four cases of corruption against Akhand Pratap Singh, one being that of Vrindavan Yadav who has sought the chief minister's intervention to get back his Rs 80,000 (with interest) from the food minister. Another case relates to a bribe of Rs 20 lakh which Singh was said to have received from the proprietor of a petrol pump in Bhopal.

The complaint says that the department officials inspected the petrol pump of M/S Karuna Trading Company on April 26 last year and sent the samples for analysis to the Indian Oil laboratory. The laboratory report found heavy adulteration of kerosene in the diesel and petrol. The security deposit of the petrol pump was forfeited and its licence was cancelled by the Collector.

The proprietor's appeal against the Collector's order was rejected by the Commissioner. The proprietor challenged the Commissioner's order in a court of law but lost there also. In spite of all that, minister Akhand Pratap Singh restored the petrol pump to the defaulter after taking a bribe of Rs 20 lakh, says Mishra's complaint to the Lokayukta on affidavit.

M/S Prasad Oil Agency is the wholesale dealer of kerosene in Rajgarh. As many as eight cases of irregularities were detected and registered against this firm and its licence was cancelled. However, the minister restored the licence to the firm for monetary considerations, says the complaint.

The rules provide that the PDS shops will be managed by the cooperative societies. Akhand Pratap Singh had, without seeking an approval from the cabinet, started taking away the PDS shops from the cooperative societies and entrusting these to the Panchayats. The minister's action was declared illegal by the Gwalior bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court but the minister ignored the High Court verdict and continued to follow his own rules.

According to Mishra's complaint, the food minister had sought hush money from Vivek Chaturvedi, president of the Tikamgarh District Cooperative Bank. Chaturvedi refused. The minister then pressured the secretary of the department to issue an order taking away the fair price shops from the cooperative societies and entrusting these to the Panchayats in Tikamgarh and Datia districts, to begin with. Later on, the minister issued directives to all districts for making similar changes for which the minister "received a huge amount of money from each Panchayat".

Lokayukta Ripusudan Dayal, appointed in the Digvijay Singh regime, is busy playing his own games, rather than investigate the corruption complaints against high-ups. K.K.Mishra's exercise had only added one more name to the long list of ministers in Madhya Pradesh facing corruption charges. If that can be any consolation to the Congress!

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