Patna: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in Bihar headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday handed over the probe of the Rs9 million (Dh508,402) soil scam involving Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad’s son Tej Pratap Yadav to the vigilance department, in yet another setback to the beleaguered Prasad family already facing multiple corruption charges.
Tej Pratap, who is the eldest son of Prasad, was the forest and environment minister in the erstwhile Grand Alliance government when the alleged scam had surfaced in April this year.
Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi on Saturday announced handing over the probe to the vigilance department after the Patna High Court sought a detailed report over the issue. It was Modi who had exposed the scam in April this year while his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in the opposition.
Strangely, Bihar chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh had earlier given a “clean chit” to Yadav in his probe report.
Modi exposed the alleged scam claiming the soil extricated for construction of the basement of a mall near Saguna More in Patna was sold for Rs9 million to the local Patna zoological park without inviting any tender. The park falls under the environment and forest ministry at the time held by Tej Pratap.
The plot of land from where the soil was cut to construct the “biggest mall in Bihar” also belongs to Prasad’s children. The construction work of this mall has now been stopped following an order by the environment ministry as the matter came to fore.
The said mall was being constructed on a two-acre plot of land by Delight Marketing Company Private Limited in which Tej Pratap Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav and Chanda Yadav, all children of Lalu Prasad, are said to be directors.
Of them, two were ministers in the ruling Nitish Kumar government. While Tej Pratap held the key portfolios of health, environment and forest, his younger son Tejashwi Yadav was the deputy chief minister, in addition to holding the portfolios of road construction, building construction, backward and extremely backward class welfare departments.
According to the BJP leader, the soil sale deal was planned just to dispose of a huge amount of soil removed from the mall construction site to make the underground parking lot. “How can soil of one’s private land be sold to a department where a family member is a minister?” asked a BJP leader.
Right now, almost the entire family has been facing troubles in corruption cases with investigating agencies such as the CBI, ED and IT department probing their alleged benami properties.
The family members currently facing the heat of the investigating agencies include Lalu Prasad, his wife Rabri, son Tejashwi Yadav, and daughters Misa Bharti, Ragini Yadav, Chanda Yadav and Hema Yadav, according to media reports.
