Builders of a new state lavish funds on rulers’ mansions

The circuit house in Raipur’s civil lines area is being “done up” at the cost of Rs 1.3 crore to function as the new state’s Raj Bhawan. The sprawling, but somewhat neglected bungalow of Irrigation Department’s chief engineer on Shankar Road is being converted into the chief minister’s residence at the cost of another Rs 1 crore. The Rajiv Gandhi Water Conservation Mission building on Balauda Bazar Road is to be made the Vidhan Bhavan (state assembly).

Also on the top of the agenda of the builders of the new state is the “modification and renovation” of another four dozen palatial bungalows which will house the state’s ministers and other top brass. “We have requisitioned 55 private houses and asked their owners to vacate them for government use,” informs M K Raut, head of Chattisgarh’s newly created Capital Projects Division.

Raut appears to be a man in hurry who has too much on his hand and too little time to do it. He has also to handle less pleasant but unavoidable tasks like providing houses to lesser government servants transferred to work at the new state capital, office space to the heads of government departments and so on. “It’s a mad scene,” concedes an IAS officer involved in the exercise. “Hard for all but profitable for a few!”

Work orders are issued without tenders because there is no time. In Bilaspur — which is to be the seat of the Chattisgarh’s High Court — two school buildings identified by the registrar of the MP High Court are to be converted into court premises at the cost of Rs 25 lakh.

Renovations of judges’ bungalows will require another Rs 27 lakh. At a time when thousands of poor in Chattisgarh are leaving for jobs elsewhere because of drought, this extravaganza has left some people stunned. “They wouldn’t have been forced to leave even if a fraction of this money was allocated for drought-prone areas,” says N K Gauraha, former Vice-Chancellor of Pt Ravi Shankar University.

Others, like CM-aspirant V C Shukla, are complaining that “the public representatives have not been consulted”. At a meeting at Raipur Circuit House two days back, state minister Satya Narayan Sharma publicly castigated officials for “doing things without asking first”. BJP leader and Union Minister Ramesh Bais is unhappy with the choice of the Circuit House as the Raj Bhawan.

“The way money is being wasted on providing luxurious comforts for the new rulers is an affront to the people of Chattisgarh whose per capita income and illiteracy rate is among the lowest in the country,” says veteran socialist leader and former union minister Purushottam Kaushik.

The state government has asked the Centre for Rs 200 crore to build the infrastructure of the new state, Kaushik points out. And this is going to be only makeshift arrangement till the new government takes over.

Some politicians are demanding a package of Rs 2,000 crore to establish the capital and other institutions of the new state on permanent basis, the veteran socialist adds. He wants to know if “the new state is to be built only for the benefit of politician, builders and colonisers?”