Naresh Kumar Vaid, Director , Vaids ICS

BEWARE! Would be civil servants. Yashwant Sonawane, the addl. collector of Malegaon was burnt alive by oil mafia on Jan 25. Charge against him? He had challenged the might of the powerful oil mafia. Prime culprit Popat Shinde had been booked for theft and pilferage of kerosene oil and FIR lodged as early as 2001. Nexus between politicians, police and the oil mafia was exposed by Sonawane. The culprits have alleged that Sonavane's driver and assistant were regularly paid Rs. 2,000/- per month to look the other way. Though both of them were present with Sonavane when he was charred to death, they have pleaded ignorance about the crime. How shameful! or it is the fear of mafia? ACCORDING to estimates, pilferage of kerosene oil is a Rs. 10,000 crore industry. Four to five thousand kiloliters of oil or about 35% of the allocation to BPL families is annually pilfered or resold in the market for being much cheaper than petrol, almost 75% cheaper. This is brought back into circulation by a

THE caption could well be corruption in government or even corrupt government . The news conference of Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, the FM, deliberately convened by the Congress to allay the doubts of common man about the laxity of the government in tackling corruption did nothing to absolve the government. THE minister said nothing about 2G (interestingly, there was a cartoon perhaps in The Statesman about a month ago. For the PM 2G means Soniaji and Rahulji ), Bofors, CWG, Adarsh Housing etc. When asked about Hasan Ali, who as per government admission owes income tax of more than Rs. 50,000/- crore, the FM shamelessly told the media that his accounts in Swiss banks are virtually empty. When the complaint was registered against Hasan Ali in 2007, exactly four years ago, his Swiss accounts had more than 8 billion USD. He was arrested but subsequently got bail as the matter was not pursued vigorously by the authorities. The FM told the media that investigations in the matter were on.