Mahadalit commission member resigns in protest
Senior member Ramchandra Ram alleges goverment officials have 'pocketed' the panel and are misusing it.
Chief minister Nitish Kumar's move to garner support of the mahadalits received a jolt on Friday when one of the seniormost members of Bihar Mahadalit Mission, Ramchandra Ram, resigned from the post citing irregularities in the functioning of the commission.
Peeved at the sorry state of affairs in the commission, Ram said, the mahadalit mission set up under it, had deviated from its cherished goal of uplifting the oppressed section of society and become 'pocket organisation' of certain officials.
"In fact, the socio-economic condition of mahadalits has become worse ever since the mission was set up. The cherished goal of their social, economic and educational uplift has been lost amidst rampant corruption at the administrative level," he alleged.
Ram said the huge fund sanctioned for the purpose had been arbitrarily spent bringing no respite to the oppressed sections of society.
"The mahadalit radio scheme is a retrograde step, which has taken them a decade back. In the age of television, computers, internet and mobiles, spending huge amounts on radio sets served no purpose," he said.
He claimed several schemes like Dashrath Manjhi skill development scheme, Mahadalit kitchen garden scheme and others had not yielded the desired results.
"The much-trumpeted scheme of allotment of 3 decimal land to landless families among the mahadalits has been mired in controversy. It is a fraud on the beneficiaries," he charged.
The Mahadalit Vikas Yojana is Nitish governmentfs flagship scheme to provide the poorest of Scheduled Caste families in Bihar with a three-decimal (1,306.8 sq-foot) plot for an Indira Awas Yojana home.
Following detection of irregularities in the allotment of land, government has cancelled the allotments made to 70 Mahadalit families in Akbarpur and Pachlova villages in Islampur block of Nalanda district.
The beneficiaries were given land in a bowl-like field that fills up in the monsoon and is marked as a pond in official records.
In Raniganj block of Araria district, the circle officer had colluded with middlemen and relatives to buy land cheap from farmers and sell it to the government at the highest permissible rate. The officer was suspended and a vigilance inquiry ordered into the land allotments.