Odisha Vigilance officials arrested Chandrajit Parija, a programmer with the district education officer-cum-district project coordinator’s office of Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan in Jagatsinghpur, after allegedly catching him accepting a Rs 30,000 bribe linked to the release of pending digital blackboard bills.
According to Vigilance sources cited by the Times of India, Parija allegedly demanded the money from an executant responsible for installing digital blackboards in schools across Jagatsinghpur district. The alleged payment was sought to facilitate the processing and clearance of bills for work that had already been completed.
Parija was a member of the procurement and technical committee responsible for inspecting the installation work and certifying it. That certification was required before the pending bills could be released in favour of the executant.
The complainant allegedly approached Parija several times to request an inspection of the completed installations. Instead of carrying out the inspection, Parija allegedly demanded Rs 30,000 to process and clear the bills, the report said. The complainant then approached Odisha Vigilance authorities.
Acting on the complaint, Vigilance officials laid a trap and allegedly caught Parija while he was accepting the money from the complainant on Thursday. The entire tainted amount was seized from him, according to the report.
The case places the administrative process for school technology installations under scrutiny. In this instance, inspection and certification formed the link between completed work and payment to the executing agency. The alleged demand was connected to that official process, although the report does not establish whether the digital blackboard installations themselves met the required technical standards.
Following the trap, Odisha Vigilance conducted simultaneous searches at three locations linked to Parija as part of a disproportionate-assets investigation. The supplied report does not provide details of any assets recovered during those searches or indicate the next stage of the case.
The arrest and searches remain part of the Vigilance investigation, and the allegations against Parija are subject to the legal process.
