By IANS
Bhubaneswar : The World Bank has identified Orissa’s former health minister Bijoyshree Routray, son of a former chief minister, as among those involved in taking a bribe for showing undue favours to a firm in a health project, it was revealed here Thursday.
The bank, in a report earlier this month uncovering the corruption scandal, had said a state minister had taken a bribe of Rs.500,000 in return for favours to a particular firm. But it had not revealed the name then.
The minister was named after the Orissa government put pressure on the World Bank.
“The bank has named Bijoyshree Routray who had allegedly taken the bribe when he was state health minister,” Orissa Chief Secretary Ajit Kumar Tripathy told reporters after a World Bank team met him in the secretariat Thursday.
Routray, son of former chief minister Nilamani Routray, served as health and family welfare minister from 2004 to 2006, when he was dropped from the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) ministry.
Elected to the state assembly continuously since 1990, he became minister of state for tourism and culture in 2000 and was made minister of state (independent charge) for forests in 2002.
Routray was not available for comment.
A detailed implementation review (DIR) report of the World Bank into the $76.4 million Orissa Health System Development Project (OHSDP), launched in 1998 and completed in 2006, said that a health minister and some officials had taken Rs.500,000 in bribes to give undue favours to a particular firm.
The state government had earlier formed a three-member panel headed by Tripathy to probe the corruption charges after the DIR report was published.
The report gives details with documentary evidence about substandard construction works and fraud in procurement of instruments and fittings for hospitals covered under the project.