As rural Gujarat gets scammed in the name of welfare, why BJP is silent

India Today

8 hours ago

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated August 11, 2025)Four scams in three months. The tribal soil of central-eastern Gujarat has of late been quite rich with embarrassment—and worse. Judge only by the expenditure domains that are seeing corruption inquiries: the execution of flagship social sector schemes, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in Dahod, Bharuch and Vadodara districts, and the Nal Se Jal scheme in Mahisagar district.advertisementThe misappropriation of funds, now being investigated, is said to have lightened the state exchequer by Rs 204 crore. The scams—Rs 71 crore in Dahod, Rs 7.3 crore in Bharuch and Rs 2.7 crore in Vadodara—reveal a near-identical pattern. Fictitious or incomplete infrastructure projects were passed off as complete for construction contractors to claim the money.
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Between January 2021 and December 31, 2024, infrastructure projects like roads, check walls and stone bunds had a phantom-like quality about them in Dahod—they existed only on paper. As befits the best fiction, a bit of fact was sometimes mixed in, as audits revealed. In Kuva village in Dahod, for instance, only 15,176 metres of the claimed 25,066 metres of roads were constructed; in Simamoi village, just 3,492 metres of 19,200 metres were built. Yet, full payments were disbursed.The money was funnelled to some 32 unauthorised firms, including Shri Raj Construction Co. and Shri Raj Traders, which alone received Rs 30.04 crore and Rs 82 lakh, respectively, without entering the mandatory bidding processes. In Bharuch and Vadodara, construction agencies similarly defrauded the government through forged bills and manipulated tenders, with payments cleared for materials never supplied, or work left incomplete.The scam in Dahod surfaced in January when local villagers complained to district authorities. An FIR was filed in April after audits by the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) confirmed inaccuracies. The scandal hit local media when two sons of minister Bachubhai Khabad (MoS, panchayat and agriculture) were among the 11 people arrested. Balwant and Kiran were later released on bail. The BJP said the arrests were a sign of its commitment to punish wrongdoers even if they were associated with a minister, but the political damage is likely to run deep.The Congress legislative party leader, Amit Chavda, was at the forefront in exposing the scam and demanding action. But in Bharuch, Congress vice-president and district leader Hira Jotva and son Digvijay were arrested on accusations of inflating material costs through their agency.The Nal Se Jal scheme saw Rs 123.44 crore purloined from funds allocated for drinking water infra like pipelines, wells and tubewells in 620 villages between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2023. The playbook was the same: forged bills, bogus documents, inflated costs, bypassed tender protocols, contracts to unauthorised agencies. It was a unit manager of the Water and Sanitation Management Organisation in Mahisagar who filed an FIR in June. The 12 arrested include a government officer and some outsourced staff.advertisementTRAIL OF FORGERYGujarat's eastern belt has 27 tribal reserved seats. Tribals influence another 13 seats—a key factor, then, in 40 of 182 assembly seats. The BJP won nine of these in 2017 and 23 in 2022. The Congress's tally shrunk from 15 in 2017 to three in 2022. Dahod typifies this: its seven MLAs are all BJP.Here, Chavda alleges, the scam covers at least two more talukas and accounts for over Rs 100 crore, but is being suppressed to save Khabad, a prominent OBC Koli leader and four-time MLA. The BJP's stoic silence has only fuelled those allegations. Its response would be critical if the Opposition—say, via Chavda's demand before the Governor for an SIT—manages to scale it up.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch