A Rs 380 crore compensation distribution scam took place in the Bharatmala project.
( Most of the scams occurred during the Congress regime, yet the Leader of the Opposition maintains a sharp stance.)
Raipur (BTI)- The Bharatmala road project in Chhattisgarh, which involves the proposed construction of a road from Visakhapatnam to Hyderabad via Raipur, Rajnandgaon, Dongargaon, Chauki, Mohla, and Gadchiroli, had to be halted midway due to the stench of corruption and remains stalled to this day. A Rs 380 crore scam has come to light, involving collusion between revenue department officials and land mafia in the preparation of cases for compensating landowners and property owners affected by the construction. This issue is resonating loudly in the ongoing session of the Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly, with the Leader of the Opposition, Charan Das Mahant, raising it with great seriousness and demanding a CBI investigation. Mahant, who has served as a cabinet minister in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh multiple times and was the Speaker of the Assembly from 2019 to 2024, has even stated that if concrete action is not taken, he will take the matter to court.
Notably, in this ambitious road project, revenue officials, in collusion with land mafia from the villages through which the road was to pass, conspired to orchestrate the compensation scam. By splitting landowners, maximizing compensation, diverting land, and manipulating various technical aspects, they played such a game that the government treasury was emptied into their own coffers. So far, recorded cases amounting to Rs 380 crore have surfaced.
With one scam after another in Chhattisgarh, the state’s image is at risk of being tarnished on national and international platforms. However, almost all major scams occurred during the tenure of the previous Congress government. Earlier scams include the Rs 2100 crore liquor scam, the NAN scam, the Mahadev app and betting scam, the cow dung scam, the Gauthan scam, a Rs 600 crore procurement scam in the medical sector, the rice scam, a custom milling scam worth thousands of crores, tripled incentive payments to millers, the coal levy scam, and the PSC scam, among others.
Seeing such a series of scams, it feels as though Chhattisgarh might have turned into a “scam state” or “Scamgarh.”
