Amit Khare

Amit Khare (born 1961) is an Indian Administrative Service officer (1985 batch) from Bihar cadre.^[1] He is noted for his role in bringing to light the Fodder scam, in which Rs. 940 crores were embezzled in Bihar over many years, and successive chief ministers Jagannath Mishra and Lalu Yadav have been imprisoned.^[2]

In late 1995, Bihar was in a financial crunch and the finance commissioner S Vijay Raghvan had asked the District Magistrates to monitor unusual withdrawals from the district treasury.^[3] Khare, who was then district commissioner at Chaibasa, noted that the district animal husbandry department had withdrawn Rs 10 crore and Rs 9 crore twice without giving any details. Even when questioned, there was no response from the animal husbandry department. Finally, in January 1996,Khare visited the office to investigate, and found it looking as if "someone had tried to destroy files in a hurry".^[3] Many bogus bills were for amounts just under Rs. 10 lakhs (when there are more stringent authorization norms). It seemed that such payments had been going on for years. The next day, simultaneous raids conducted at Ranchi and elsewhere found similar practices.^[4] This was the first evidence of the scam, which gathered momentum after regional CBI director U. N. Biswas defied political pressures to pursue the case up to the chief minister level. Those convicted include the preceding DM of Chaibasa, IAS officer Sajal Chakraborty.^[5]

Khare has interests in Education and has served the State Elementary education secretary for several terms, and has also worked at the Ministry of Human Resource Development at the center. He has also served as principal secretary to Jharkhand governor Ved Marwah,^[6] and as Collector and DM, Patna.^[3] He is now posted as Principal Secretary (Finance), Government of Jharkhand, Ranchi. ^[7]

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