'Land given away at Re 1 per acre, corruption at highest level in Bihar,' alleges Prashant Bhushan against Nitish govt

Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan

Senior advocate of the Supreme Court, Prashant Bhushan, on Saturday levelled serious allegations against the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar, claiming it was guilty of “corruption at the highest level.”

At a press conference in Patna, Bhushan alleged that the NDA government had leased out nearly 1,000 acres of land at Bhagalpur to a major industrial conglomerate at what he described as a throwaway rate. “The business group has been handed over a 30-year lease at the price of just one rupee per annum,” he charged, adding that the deal would “result in an estimated annual loss of Rs 5,000 crore to the state exchequer.”

The senior lawyer, known for his anti-corruption campaigns, insisted that there must be “transparency and fairness” in the state’s land acquisition process. He suggested setting up a commission to ensure adequate compensation for those displaced by such projects.

The state industry minister, Nitish Mishra, however, dismissed all accusations of wrongdoing. He maintained that no irregularities had taken place, explaining that the company in question was chosen because “among four bidders, it had agreed to supply electricity to consumers at the lowest rate.”

Bhushan also turned his attention to electoral matters in Bihar, where polls are due later this year. He alleged discrepancies in the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, pointing out instances where names had mysteriously vanished. “I addressed a symposium here earlier in the day where I met a local academician who has done some research on SIR. He has come across wrongful deletion of the names of nine voters, all Muslims, from the voters’ list of just one assembly segment in Sheikhpura district. Their names cannot be found in the draft electoral rolls nor in the list of 65 lakh people who have been declared as dead, absent and shifted. The EC has simply made these names disappear,” Bhushan claimed.

He accused the Election Commission of overstepping its authority. “The EC has assumed responsibility of ascertaining citizenship... which is the prerogative of the Government of India, foreign tribunals and courts only,” he said.

The lawyer did not spare the BJP-led government either, describing its pre-poll sops as little more than “electoral bribes.”

CPI(ML) Liberation MLA Satyadeo Ram, who also addressed the media, echoed Bhushan’s concerns and described the SIR exercise as a deliberate distraction. “SIR was part of the tactics to divert public attention away from failures of the ruling NDA, which has been in power for 20 years,” he remarked.

According to Ram, the government was resorting to chaos to mask its shortcomings. “The regime is not shying away from unleashing chaos as a diversionary tactic ahead of elections, but the people have seen through the game,” he asserted.

Meanwhile, the Congress had earlier this week staged a march in Patna over the same land lease issue, signaling that the controversy is fast becoming a major poll plank in Bihar’s political battlefield.

With inputs from PTI