A senior IAS officer and a retired IPS officer are at the top of a list of those being given credit for the conviction of 45 people in a 17-year-old fodder scam case.

Amit Khare, then a Bihar-cadre IAS officer, was deputy commissioner of West Singhbhum district in 1996 when he stumbled upon the scam.

On Monday, when a special CBI court in Ranchi convicted the 45, Khare, now a joint secretary in the union Human Resource Development ministry, joked: “I did not think I would see this day before my retirement!”

The retired IPS officer, Upen Biswas, was the CBI joint director who relentlessly pursued the case. But on Monday, he chose to remain silent, having turned a politician himself.

Biswas is West Bengal’s minister for the welfare of backward communities in Mamata Banerjee’s government.

Khare though was obviously elated. The convictions, he said, also gives him enough hope to ask all young civil servants to fearlessly uphold the law.

“Any officer should fearlessly uphold the law, that is what we are here for. I will also point out that even with all the pressures, at least all those who are there in the higher civil services are far more protected than say a junior engineer or chief medical officers…it is all the more important for us to stand up for the law,” Khare told The Indian Express.

While the 1985-batch Bihar-born officer is glad there is finally closure on the issue, he has had his share of the trials and tribulation that come with taking on the establishment.

Within months of exposing the fodder scam, Khare was transferred to the defunct Bihar State Leather Cooperation that had not paid salaries for six months. Subsequently he was packed off as controller of the Bihar Combined Entrance Examination Board that did not exist. Khare eventually set it up and it is running successfully now.

“The toughest part was in 1997 when I had taken leave because my father was seriously ill…but my leave was canceled…and I was asked to come back to Patna. My father passed away in the meanwhile,” an anguished Khare recalled.

Khare says he had no inkling that he had sparked off a chain of events that eventually led straight to the chief minister’s office. Today he lauds the media, the courts and CBI officers for their role in it.

Bihar was reeling under a financial strain when Khare was appointed deputy commissioner of West Singhbhum and the state finance department had alerted all deputy commissioners and collectors to inquire into payments that were being made under the sub-heads of animal husbandry and fisheries.

On January 27, 1996, Khare, concerned over the surprisingly high withdrawal made by the Chaibasa animal husbandry department, sought a response on it and ended up raiding the office.

“It appeared a little surprising that in the two months of November and December, the withdrawals were massive – in one month 10 crore and in another it was 9 crore…I thought I will just call the animal husbandry officer and verify but when we called them, all of a sudden we were informed that many of them had run away from their offices.

“I sent a team to inquire and then I went personally and we found a whole lot of fake bills strewn all over in office, cash, that too in lakhs, lying around and there were a lot of rubber stamps. It appeared that something was going on. So immediately after that we alerted all the offices…on police wireless sets we learnt that at other locations also officers had run away.

“So then we decided immediately all bills – their payments should be stopped, whatever offices are there should be sealed because we have seen normally in such cases in Bihar that documents would disappear or files go missing.”

Khare, now a Jharkhand cadre official, soon informed the state government and alerts spread to Ranchi, Jamshedpur and other districts, snowballing by the day.

In Kolkata on Monday, Upen Biswas asked TV crew to switch off their cameras before making it clear that he would not comment on the conviction.

He said he had received several hundred phone calls since Sunday related to one “national issue”. “But I have come here to inform you that I will not say anything on the subject,” he said, and walked off.

Moments earlier, Biswas was at a Trinamool Congress organisational meeting at the Netaji Indoor Stadium where Mamata was outlining the party’s priorities for the 2014 polls. She referred to the Ranchi court judgment, in passing. Mamata exhorted her party members not to be like the CPM cadres who had “looted Bengal for 34 years” and said: “See Laluji has been sent to jail,” and went on to add: “You are there today, you may not be there tomorrow. Who will enjoy ill-gotten fruits?”

After his vigorous pursuit of the fodder scam, Biswas had contested the 2011 assembly polls from Bagda, a constituency on the Bangladesh border in North 24-Parganas. He had won handsomely .

Mr. Narayanaswamy

First Rank in State in Secondary School Examination
First Rank in University in Plus Two
First Rank in IIT Entrance Examination
First Rank in All India IIT Computer Science
First Rank in IAS Entrance Examination
First Rank in IAS Training Institute

On passing out from IIT Chennai Mr. Narayanaswamy was offered scholarship by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology , USA .. He who came from a middle class family believed that he had a moral obligation to give something in return for the lakhs of rupees the government spent on him as an IIT student. He had the intelligence and conviction to realize that this money came also from the poorest of the poor – who pay up the excise duty on textiles when they buy cloth, who pay up customs, excise and sales tax on diesel when they travel in a bus, and in numerous other ways indirectly pay the government. So he decided to join IAS hoping he could do something for the people of this country. How many young men have the will power to resist such an offer from USA ? Narayanaswamy did never look at IAS as a black money spinner as his later life bears testimony to this fact.

After a decade of meritorious service in IAS, today, Narayanaswamy is being forced out of the IAS profession. Do you know why?

A real estate agent wanted to fill up a paddy field which is banned under law. An application came up before Narayanaswamy who was sub collector the, for an exemption from this rule for this plot of land. Upon visiting the site he found that the complaint from 60 poor families that they will face water logging due to the waste water from a nearby Government Medical College if this paddy field was filled up was correct. Narayanswamy came under intense political pressure but he did what was right – refused permission for filling up the paddy field. That was his first confrontation with politicians.

Soon after his marriage his father-in-law closed down a public road to build compound wall for his plot of land. People approached Narayanaswamy with complaint.

When talking with his own father-in-law did not help, he removed the obstructing wall with police help. The result, his marriage broke up.

As district Collector he raided the house of a liquor baron who had defaulted Rupees 11 crores payment to government and carried out revenue recovery. A Minister directly telephoned him and ordered to return the forfeited articles to the house of the liquor baron. Narayanswamy politely replied that it is difficult. The minister replied that Narayanaswamy will suffer.

In his district it was a practice to collect crores of rupees for earthen bunds meant for poor farmers, but which were never constructed. A bill for rupees 8 crores came up before Narayanaswamy. He inspected the bund. He found it very weak and said that he will pass the bill after the rainy season to ensure that the bund served the purpose. As expected the earthen bund was too weak to stand the rain and it disappeared in the rain. But he created a lot of enemies for saving 8 crores public money. The net result of all such unholy activities was that he was asked to go on leave by the government. Later such an illustrious officer was posted as “State Co-Ordinator, Quality Improvement Programme for Schools”. This is what the politician will do to a honest officer with backbone – post him in the most powerless position to teach him a lesson. Since he found that nothing can be achieved for the people if he continued with the State Service he opted for central service. But that too was denied on some technical ground.

What will you do when you have a brilliant computer career anywhere in the world you choose with the backing of several advanced technical papers too published in international journals to your credit?

When you are powerless to do anything for the people, why should you waste your life as the Co-Ordinator for a Schools Programme?

Mr. Narayanaswamy is on the verge of leaving IAS to go to Paris to take up a well paid United Nations assignment. The politicians can laugh thinking another obstacle has been removed. But it is the helpless people of this country who will lose – not Narayanaswamy. But you have the power to support capable and honest bureaucra ts like Narayaswamy, G.R.Khairnar and Alphons Kannamthanam who have suffered a lot under self seeking politicians who rule us. You have even the power to replace such politicians with these kind of people dedicated to the country. The question is will you do the little you can do NOW? At least a vote or word in support of such personalities?

U. Sagayam (born 1962) is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and currently the Managing Director of Co-optex. He is the first IAS officer in the state to make his assets
public – a bank balance of Rs 7,172 and a house in Madurai worth Rs 9 lakh. Due to his actions against corrupt activities, he was transferred 19 times in a span of 20 years.

District Collector Sagayam, Indian Police Service officer Asra Garg and Madurai city police commissioner, P. Kannappan were appointed by the Election Commission to oversee the Assembly elections in Madurai district.

They were highly commended by the Chief Election Commissioner of India, S. Y. Quraishi, for conducting fair and corruption-free elections in the district, in the face of considerable opposition from some of the political parties involved. This included a lawsuit filed against Sagayam and Garg by Alagiri, the Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers. He had alleged major violations by many granite quarries in madurai district and had estimated a loss of more than sixteen thousand crore rupees to the state exchequer.