Chief minister Hemant Soren has ordered a probe into the state’s handicrafts corporation, popularly known across the country as Jharcraft, for alleged misappropriation of Rs 18 crore while executing a plan to distribute blankets among the poor between 2016-2017 when a BJP government was at the helm.
As per an official communique issued late on Tuesday night, Hemant asked the anti-corruption bureau to initiate a preliminary inquiry against former Jharcraft CEO Renu Gopinath Paniker, former deputy general manager Md Naseem Akthar and former CFO Ashok Thakur.
ACB sources later told The Telegraph Online that cases against the three officials were expected to be lodged formally in a day or two.
The red flag about alleged financial irregularities in Jharkhand Silk, Textile and Handicraft Development Corporation (Jharcraft) _ its tussar silk sarees are a big draw nationally and internationally _ was first raised by the CAG whose report was later tabled in the Assembly in 2018.
The CAG report, on what came to be known as the “blanket scam”, said that Jharcraft officials had made fraudulent payment of Rs 18.41 crore against fictitious records relating to cost of woollen yarn, wages and finishing and transportation of 8.89 lakh blankets between November 2016 and May 2017.
Jharcraft was buying the blankets, worth Rs 29.48 crore, for the state labour department for distribution among people living below poverty line. Accordingly, it had placed orders with NAN Woollen Mills and Unnati International, both in Panipat (Haryana), for supplying 21.58 lakh kg of yarn for distribution among 62 self-help groups and primary weavers cooperative societies across eight districts.
After weaving, the blankets were supposed to be washed and transported to Nutan Industries, also in Panipat, for providing finishing touches and transported back to various districts for distribution. Jharcraft incurred an expenditure of Rs 19.39 crore, including transportation cost, till January 2018.
“But audits indicated that the purported transactions were a fabric of fiction and Jharcraft officials purchased inferior blankets from elsewhere,” the CAG report had claimed, adding that the yarn that was supposed to reach first at the Jharcraft central store at Irba near Ranchi for quality check, was shown as supplied directly to 27 clusters of Jharcraft for reasons not placed on record by officials.
The CAG also found several discrepancies in Jharcraft’s claim of using hundreds of vehicles to transport 18.84 lakh kg yarn and semi-finished blankets from Panipat to 27 clusters of Jharkhand in 2017. A study of transport challans and road permits pointed to inflated bills having been raised.
Based on the CAG report, the state industry department constituted an enquiry committee in March 2018. But the issue was pushed under the carpet after a few months even though several activists and leaders, including Saryu Roy, who was then food and civil supplies minister in the Raghubar Das government, demanding an independent probe.
Alok Dubey, a spokesperson of the Congress which is part of the ruling alliance in the state, said the Jharcraft issue was only the “tip of the iceberg of corruption” during the tenure of the earlier BJP-led state government.
“During the last five years, the BJP claimed to have offered bedag sarkar (corruption free government). But the reality is that the biggest irregularities happened during this time. Be it blanket purchase, creation of land banks, Momentum Jharkhand investor’s meet and so on… every act of the Raghubar Das government was seeped in financial irregularities. All this will now start getting uncovered,” he said.
