Deconstructing the dons

PATNA: Unable to rid the road construction work from the clutches of criminals-turned-contractors, the Bihar government has now decided to have a Special Task Force of police officers, exclusively for the road construction department (RCD).
According to commissioner cum secretary RCD, RK Singh, the proposal to have a special team of police officers headed by a DIG rank officer, who will be assisted by two SP rank officers, had been awaiting approval of the state cabinet and is likely to be through in a week’s time, Singh added.
This is going to be another new experiment of deploying IPS officers in the road construction work. The Nitish Kumar government, soon after taking the reigns in Bihar, had declared improvement of roads as its top priority.
The government posted Singh, considered to be a very tough officer, as RCD secretary thinking that he would be able to break the nexus of don contractors and engineers flourishing in the state for last many years. Singh has been trying his best to rope in the reputed road construction firms from outside the state to build the 2000 kms long state highway, apart from repairing and maintaining the 3500 kms National Highway.
But the road construction work is yet to take off as the different gangs of criminals-turned-contractors, who had distributed the area wise road network amongst themselves, were still not ready to lay their hands off the contracts. Any contractor from outside is asked to cough up their cut money if he wants to take up the work in their area. The new contractors demand a higher construction rate to meet the demands of the dons.
Fed up with the demand, the government had now decided to use the iron hand by deploying a specially trained police force equipped with modern weapons and communication facilities to deal with the dons. Besides maintaining a strict vigil on the construction activities, the site engineers would also be provided an armed body guard each to ensure their safety and smooth functioning of the work, said RK Singh.
Some days ago, the state posted another tough IAS officer, KK Pathak as Additional commissioner cum Special Secretary in the RCD. The Patna HC had also been pressurising the state to begin construction and repairs of roads across the state.