A dead man is purported to have received the relief package even as over 200 destitute families returned home empty-handed thanks to the monopoly of elected representatives.
Shrawan Kumar Dev: Centre for Investigative Journalism-Nepal
On April 15, 2020, Hanumannagar Kankalini Municipality’s Ward-1 organised a relief distribution program for the poor and the destitute as well as daily wage labourers at Bhardaha Chowk in Saptari District. At the program, each family was provided with 15 kilos of rice, two kilos of pulse, a litre of cooking oil, and a kilo of salt.
The recipients of the relief, though, did not belong to the targeted groups. Rather, they were the relatives of Bhim Raj Mandal, the ward chairperson. The nation-wide lockdown, enforced by the government to help prevent the spread of coronavirus infection, was flouted even as the ward office gathered a crowd to distribute the relief packages. Over 25 individuals who reached Bhardaha Chowk in the hope of receiving the relief packages were turned away even as the ward chairman distributed the packages to his relatives.
Left: Gulten Sada’s death certificate. Right: List of people receiving relief fund.
Those who found their names missing from the list of eligible recipients pleaded the ward chairperson. “It’s difficult for us to even manage our meals, Mr. Chairman. Why isn’t our name included on the list?” asked Gopal Biswas, one of the hopefuls.
“Get the hell out of here,” the chairperson yelled as he swung a stick at Biswas. The chairperson’s misdemeanor led to a commotion as other hopefuls who had accompanied Biswas asked, in unison, why their names had indeed been missing from the list.
After hullabaloo, the chairperson called forces from the nearby area police office to disperse the crowd and halted the relief distribution program immediately.
The relief distribution program resumed the next day with a fresh list of 582 eligible families. In fact, it was the third list prepared–and eventually approved–after two initial lists, which had 1,200 and 800 families respectively in the ward with a total of 1,245 families, were rejected by the municipality.
The third list, though, is dominated by relatives of the ward chairperson–including his sister-in-law–and other local political representatives. A host of well-to-do families from the ward also figure on the list.
The ward chairperson conceded that the relief distribution had been a mess. “Everyone put their names on the list, preventing the genuinely poor and destitute families from receiving the relief packages,” Mandal said. He added that he was trying his best to provide relief to 200 genuinely poor and destitute families in the ward.
The 200 families from the bottom of the economic strata had been left out of the relief distribution program thanks to the party-centric approach. When he tried to prepare a list of 200 families initially, the Mandal said, representatives of political parties bulldozed their way into expanding the list to include 500 families. That led to the failure in distributing the relief packages, he added.
Mandal is not the only person to have included relatives on the list of eligible recipients. Sanjay Khadka, a member of the ward, provided the relief packages to his uncles Ramananda Khadka and Vasudev Khadka, as is evident at no 118 and 119 respectively on the list.
At no. 243 on the list is Jagadish Yadav, a former vice-chairperson of the erstwhile Bhardaha Village Development Committee. Jagadish is the owner of a 5 bigha plot and a pucca house; so is Chet Narayan Yadav, at no 509 on the list. Also on the list are Jagarnath Ishar and Laxman Sah, both of whom own pucca houses at Bhardaha Chowk on the East-West highway. And yet, they all took the relief packages, each worth Rs 1150 meant for the impoverished–15 kilos of rice, two kilos of pulse, a litre of cooking oil and a kilo of salt indeed.
This contravenes the Province-2 administration’s guidelines on relief distribution, which bars families that have members in political, administrative, or public positions from receiving Covid-19 relief materials.
“Relief may be provided only to those families that: have no members in political, administrative or public positions; have no family businesses; have members who are daily wagers, labourers and have no source of income,” the guideline states.
Phulendra Raut, who represented the Samajvadi Party in the relief distribution committee, provided the relief to his sister-in-law (younger brother’s wife), Lakho Devi Raut, who figures at no. 4 on the list. In fact, he had also included the names of his mother, Bauki Devi, and brother, Arbendra Raut, on the list. However, after public outcry, Bauki Devi was replaced by Baijanath Mandal, and Rabendra by Nandan Mishra. Mishra, the new entrant on the list, claimed to have run from pillar to post to receive the relief package.
At no. 137 is Renu Devi Singh, wife of Jagadish Prasad Singh, a member of the relief distribution committee representing the ruling Nepal Communist Party. Jagadish Prasad, however, washed his hands off the controversy, claiming that his wife’s name on the list was included by others. “The relief distribution has certainly been a mess,” Singh said, adding, “The guidelines for relief distribution set by the provincial government have been summarily rejected everywhere.”
Mandal, the ward chairperson, who was elected on a ticket from the erstwhile Madhesi Jana Adhikar Forum Nepal (currently Janata Samajvadi), had given priority to those close to him while distributing relief packages in his ward. The party’s Hanumannagar Kankalini Municipality City Committee member Ramu Biswas, as well as Ward-1 members Fagu Gaim, Birendra Kumar Mandal, Pana Malah, Rajendra Mandal and Bhola Prasad Mandal, are known to have received the relief.
Deceased man ‘receives’ relief
As though the relief distribution program had not been shady enough, the list of relief recipients prepared by the Hanumannagar Kankalini Municipality includes the name of an individual who has already been dead for over five years. At no. 32 on the list is the late Gulten Sada, a former resident of the erstwhile Baradaha VDC-1. The man has allegedly ‘received the relief–fifteen kilos of rice, two kilos of pulse, a litre of cooking oil and a kilo of salt–although the erstwhile Bhardaha VDC issued a death certificate in his name on May 18, 2015.
According to Hanumannagar Kankalini Municipality mayor Sailesh Shah, Ward-1 was the most controversial of all the wards in the municipality when it came to relief distribution. “We’ve received complaints that the chairperson and other representatives included the names of their own relatives and well-to-do people while neglecting the poor,” Shah said, adding, such representatives should be slapped with corruption cases.
As workers and poor people find themselves unable to arrange two meals a day due to the pandemic, former minister for irrigation Umesh Yadav said, the monopoly of elected representatives and well-to-do families over relief materials is an utter disregard for the poor. “It’s a matter of shame that well-off people have been fighting over the relief even as the destitute and the daily wagers are in dire straits,” Yadav added.
