Newsmaker: The rise and fall of former Jharkhand CM Madhu Koda

Election to six state Assemblies were held in 2005, when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA’s) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had spent just a year in office. Just before the results began coming in, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) voiced an interesting thought. It was suggested that while the PM was concerned about the outcome in Bihar, Haryana and other states, his primary worry was over a state that seemed the least important at the time. Officials confided it was Jharkhand  — a state sitting on a volcano of Left-wing extremism, pluralistic politics and enormous riches on account of natural resources.  

Manmohan Singh was prescient. The state has been in the vortex of a massive corruption scam involving 26 natural resource mining projects that has at its centre independent MLA and former Chief Minister Madhu Koda, Jharkhand Chief Secretary Ashok Basu and a fine, upstanding bureaucrat and Union Coal Secretary, HC Gupta.
 

Koda has been convicted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in one of the cases he is reported to be involved in. The Enforcement Directorate is after him for alleged money laundering, diversion of state funds and making illegal investments abroad including purchase of mines as far as Liberia, in west Africa. Interestingly, it is only Koda and the bureaucrats who have been convicted. His accountant and the man he did business with have both been acquitted.
 

The way the scam happened was this. In the bad old days when coal and iron mining concessions were handed over to companies on the basis of recommendations made  by a state government committee, as chief minister, Madhu Koda saw a way of monetising this power. He — so the CBI says — connived with bureaucrats to launch a conspiracy where he could get pay-offs for listing companies for mining concessions that were not on the list earlier — and bumping out from the list, companies that were. One of the companies that was put on the list was the Kolkata-based Vini Iron and Steel Udyog Limited  (Visul). Visul’s Director Vaibhav Tulsyan has been acquitted. Navin Kumar Tulsyan chartered accountant, has also been acquitted. The CBI says Visul was Koda’s own company — he bought it, installed a dummy owner and allocated mining concessions to his own company.

This is just one of the cases. There are six others. Corruption in the mining scam is said to amount to upwards of  Rs 4,000 crore.

How did Koda get to where he was? Koda started out as an Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sympathiser in the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, fought the Assembly election in 1995 and 2000 on a BJP ticket, and was persuaded to be part of the team supporting BJP leader Arjun Munda. Like all other politicians in Jharkhand, Koda was associated with the movement for statehood and lost in 1995 but won in the 2000 Assembly election following Bihar’s bifurcation, rising to become a panchayati raj  minister of state in the Babulal Marandi government . 

His performance, colleagues say, was chequered. Even as panchayati raj minister he had connections with industrialists from West Singhbhum. BJP saw this and sensed the man could become a liability. That is why the BJP denied him a ticket in the 2005 election. He contested as an independent and won. Then, as an independent, he happened to be in the right time at the right place in 2005 when the Congress needed someone to head a coalition to stave off the BJP  from coming to power in the state after the election threw up a hung House. The independents — Koda, Kamlesh Singh and others — formed a tactical partnership. After the UPA agreed to propel Koda to chief ministership, the others held on to their portfolios.

That is Koda. What of HC Gupta? Thirty seven years in the IAS and now this? His batchmates say they cannot believe for one minute, that Gupta could have been involved. 
 

 “The basic argument is that, in his ex-officio capacity as chairman of the screening committee set up for recommending allocation of coal blocks to different private firms setting up power, cement or steel plants, Gupta failed to follow the prescribed guidelines, and that the responsibility for this rests squarely with him,”  S Y Quraishi,  former chief election commissioner and his batchmate, is quoted as saying. “The screening committee, which Gupta chaired as coal secretary, had [representatives from] the administrative ministries, the state governments where coal blocks and end-use plants were located, and officials of the coal ministry, Coal India, technical experts, etc. as members. They were together responsible for providing all duly verified facts, along with their recommendations and opinions. There are various steps before it reaches the chairman. All that is part of the procedure and needs to be considered.”

The fact is, there is no  mens rea  (intent) in Gupta’s case. Nor is there any evidence of money, personal gain or gratification. There are no mine purchases in Liberia, land houses or farms. The conviction is entirely on the basis of circumstantial evidence and  the fact that Gupta may have overlooked prescribed guidelines.
 

The Koda-Gupta case points to structural and policy infirmities. There was a time when oligarchies around natural resource mining and environmental clearances seemed to be emerging. Koda was a (temporary) beneficiary. But a collateral victim seems to have been Gupta. And the systemic failure that caused that is still awaiting change.