Authorities said the state government had received 11,000 complaints with regard to allotment of Indira Awas Yojana (IAY), a free housing scheme for those living below the poverty line, during the last two months since the ruling National Democratic Alliance government decided to upload videos of bribe-seeking officials to the social media website.
"Of the total number of complaints that we have received, around 1,100 are of very serious nature wherein the officials sought bribes from the beneficiaries whereas 9,000 are of general nature but they are indeed quite embarrassing for us," Bihar Rural Development Minister Nitish Kumar Mishra said yesterday.
The minister said the government verified all the complaints before putting them on YouTube to expose corrupt officials.
"It [complaints of corruption] has indeed come as a big embarrassment for us and bad publicity for the bribe-seeking officials but we hope to bring down corruption complaints in days to come by this way," Mishra, son of former Bihar chief minister Dr Jagannath Mishra, said. He said fear of exposure would make corrupt officials think twice.
Complaints
The state government launched the initiative after receiving a huge number of corruption complaints at the chief minister's weekly "people court" at the official residence in Patna.
But the chief catalyst was the shocking suicide of an entire family by immolation in August after a middleman fraudulently withdrew Rs30,000 (Dh 2,248.32) from his bank account. The money was transferred to the victim's account for the construction of a house.
Police said the cheating shocked the extremely poor family so much that they burnt themselves to death. The victims included Rambachan Rajvanshi, his young wife and three children aged between one and five.
Under the rule, each IAY beneficiary is allotted Rs30,000 to build a home. But in Maoists-hit districts like Auranagabad, Arwal, Jehanabad, Gaya and Rohtas, the amount rises to Rs45,000.
An official report said the state government has disbursed Rs30 billion this year for homes for around a million poor families in Bihar by organising special camps in all 534 blocks across the state.
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