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COVER STORY: B.P. VERMA
Against All Odds
Verma was unscrupulous and parochial yet managed
to reach the top using his clout
Late last Wednesday
evening, the Ministry of Finance received a one-and-a-half page report
from the CBI headquarters on the arrest of Central Board of Excise and
Customs (CBEC) chairman B.P. Verma in a corruption case two days earlier.
The report was made available after a great deal of persuasion and apparently
at the intervention of Cabinet Secretary T.R. Prasad. Finance Minister
Yashwant Sinha, who was in his constituency in Hazaribagh, was contacted
and a telephonic approval was obtained for placing Verma under suspension.
And before North Block went on an extended holiday, it was curtains for
the controversial customs chief.
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POWERLESS: Yashwant Sinha asserts
that he wanted Verma out two months ago
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Verma was no ordinary official. He headed an
80,000-strong work force that included 1,729 Class I officers responsible
for a projected collection of Rs 53,750 crore in revenue this fiscal year.
He was no stranger to controversy either. A former colleague, B.V. Kumar,
ex-director general of revenue intelligence, puts it bluntly. "Verma
is a man known for corruption." Till 1992, the then CBEC chairman,
J. Dutta, is said to have ensured that Verma was not given an executive
posting as he had a "reputation of being corrupt". In May 2000,
Central Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal had made it known that there
was a vigilance file against Verma that was yet to be closed. But fortune
was on Verma's side. Though a board member had filed a petition in the
Delhi High Court questioning his credentials, Verma was appointed CBEC
chairman after the petition against him was "dismissed as withdrawn"
by the court.
Verma was known as a " hands-on officer".
As deputy director in the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, he oversaw
anti-smuggling operations on the Indo-Nepal border. His colleagues say
as chief customs commissioner of Kanpur, Verma took keen interest in the
postings of officers on the Nepal border. His peer group charges him with
operating through a coterie of senior customs officers, whom he rewarded
with lucrative postings at Visakhapatnam, Kolkata, Chennai and Noida.
Verma's baiters accuse him of being part of the well-entrenched network
of customs and excise officers, exporters and agents. Besides corruption,
he is also accused of placing pliant officers in crucial posts in the
Excise and Customs Department and of parochialism. It is alleged that
he used the influential Kayastha lobby to get jobs done.
Verma, it is said, knew that the CBI was on
his trail. But so confident was he of his clout that in mid-March, a week
before the raids began on his properties, he addressed a seminar in London.
And its subject? Customs and integrity.
-Shishir Gupta
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